


Withered Roots

by justanotherStonyfan



Series: Banned Together Fills [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Depression, Getting Together, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Relationship Negotiation, Sam Wilson Feels, Suicidal Thoughts, pre-Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes/Sam Wilson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:34:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28602279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherStonyfan/pseuds/justanotherStonyfan
Summary: Blue eyes closed, blond hair lank and dirty,Riley,his mouth remembered crying out once, a long time ago, and the name on his lips then might have been either one of them - he couldn’t tell for sure.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson
Series: Banned Together Fills [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1825168
Comments: 22
Kudos: 49
Collections: Banned Together Bingo 2020





	Withered Roots

**Author's Note:**

> Read for sensitivity by the fabulous [BabaTunji](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BabaTunji/pseuds/BabaTunji) (via [ZepysGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZepysGirl) and the Marvel Trumps Hate auction), and beta-read (with greatly appreciated enthusiasm) by [Cloudycelebrations](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudycelebrations/pseuds/cloudycelebrations). 
> 
> This is another Banned Together Bingo 2020 entry, this time for my "Interracial Relationships" square

Without the mud and blood all over him, he seemed dead already. 

The bruises were dark and deep, his skin pale and waxy. 

It would only be a matter of time.

Sam had not been the first to Steve’s side on the riverbank. He hadn't seen whatever the paramedics had seen first of all – and from what Sam understood, it was pretty bad. But that was all he’d missed. He'd been first out of the chopper after demanding they set it down, he’d run to the edge of the Potomac on aching feet because he’d seen the soiled flag of Steve Rogers from the sky. With freshly bruised arms, he’d pushed through the few people gathered there - startled joggers and rubber-necking bystanders - staggered forward on legs still unsteady from the hard landing and the hard run and the adrenalin, and pushed all else aside to reach what he prayed wasn’t just a body on a gurney. 

What he’d found was a man who soon might be.

Blue eyes closed, blond hair lank and dirty, _Riley,_ his mouth remembered crying out once, a long time ago, and the name on his lips then might have been either one of them - he couldn’t tell for sure. 

Steve was moved away from him, pulled from him, wrenched away and made to vanish as the buzzing under Sam’s skin grew louder, loaded up into an ambulance and driven away by people whose words were harsh and clipped and loud and uncaring and taken further than his hands could reach. 

Natasha had offered him a ride to the hospital, rotors still spinning, yelling into her headset and coming through loud and clear in Sam’s ear. With DC air traffic in turmoil, and SHIELD distress signals still trusted for maybe an hour or so longer, before the media came to understand, before it _really_ hit the fan, they had a window.

And so Sam was there when they wheeled Steve into the operating theater, making it in time to give Steve up to others so that he might be given a chance to live. 

Sam let the doctors look him over because it needed doing, and because it would pass the time. Each moment he spent reading numbers off a far wall, looking at lights and breathing deeply, was a moment Sam didn’t have to consider the icon lying muddied and dirtied in a room he might not leave alive. Sam didn't rest when his own treatments were done, didn’t sit down or grab a coffee, so that he was there when they wheeled Steve back to a guarded, private room. And there he stayed.

So Sam was there when three orderlies helped roll Steve onto his side to check stitches, and there when they'd supported Steve's head so it wouldn't loll forwards, Steve’s hands loose and open, body lax. Sam had even been there (although he carefully did not watch) when they dealt with things that made Sam wince in sympathy, like the catheter and the catheter bag, or the vein they found and pierced with a bright, sharp needle that made Sam’s heart race oddly, made his breath come too quickly. Sam was there when they'd checked dressings and there when they'd checked the pads on Steve's skin to keep track of his heartbeat but, for a while, it was just for show. To make Steve _comfortable_.

Bullet wounds aren't like they look in films. Sam knew this because he'd seen this. In films, it's like someone's jabbed a hole into you, like a hole punch or a skewer or any number of things that just put an inch-wide hole along the path of a little piece of metal.

But it wasn’t like that when you were shot. It wasn’t like that when you took a bullet, just like cars didn't leave a car-shaped hole in the wall like an old cartoon when they really crashed. 

There's a shockwave. When a bullet passes through the body, it opens up the flesh like a balloon behind it, a huge shockwave gap that closes just as soon as it opens, but the damage is done. Imagine crushing that much flesh, imagine slinging that much of the inside of a human body to one side. Through-and-throughs are better, through-and-throughs keep going, take the rest of their energy with them. If there's no exit wound, you've got a piece of metal stuck inside you and all the force that kicked it into your body stays in there with it, stays in you and does more damage. But through-and-throughs still do the damage. Bullets don't punch. They _macerate_.

Sam was there when they showed him x-rays – shattered femur, fractured ischium, broken collarbone, broken humerus, fractured vertebrae, shattered ribs – and Sam was there when they told him about the rest of it – lacerated rectus femoris, biceps femoris, vastus lateralus, gracilis, vastus medialis, latissimus dorsi, thoracolumbar fascia, words after words after words and all they meant was _everywhere_. Stomach, diaphragm, kidneys, liver, intestine, and so much torn in his shoulder that it was a wonder he'd kept his arm attached, so many bones broken in his hand that he ought never be able to use his fingers again. Sam was no fool, and he knew what it all meant. Even though he'd had Steve’s back, even though Sam had _caught_ Steve the way he couldn't catch...

_No._

He'd failed before. He'd succeeded this time. And though Sam knew it wouldn't be enough for Steve this time, he knew too that any one of those wounds would have stopped an ordinary man, incapacitated him for life. Nobody should have been able to move with wounds like that. But there Steve had stood and there he lay afterward, a broken cheekbone and a broken nose and three broken teeth on top of everything else. It wouldn't matter how they tried to mend him. 

There was no whistling wind, no final decision, no vast expanse of ice, no burning wings, no searing heat, no endless desert plain. Here was a warm bed and shallow breaths and the soon-to-be body of Steve Rogers. And Sam would not leave him. Steve deserved for someone to hold his hand and thank him when the worst came.

It would just be a matter of time, and Sam knew that, knew that Steve was so broken that there could be no mending. Sam took it all on board, and he resolved to yell and scream and grieve _afterward_ , when there would be time, when it wouldn’t matter how long it took to show his face. But now, when time was limited, was when he sat down with a book and some music so that he would be there when...

So that Steve wouldn't die alone this time.

So Sam had been there when they'd said gently, _it might be better not to hold out too much hope,_ when they spoke in quiet voices and showed Sam how to call for help, there when they offered him cushions and coffee and couldn't bring themselves to smile, only to comfort. He'd been there when they passed outside, saw the looks on their faces each time they saw Sam Wilson sitting beside Steve Rogers. It was the look of people who'd seen it before, and knew how it ended. He wanted to smash the machines to pieces, scream in the face of the stupid, repetitive sounds of the monitors. But those sounds were all he had left, all that was left of Steve.

And Sam had been there when they shuffled in quietly, so that they wouldn’t wake a man who couldn’t wake, checked numbers by rote because there was no other reason to do it, and made notes of the numbers Sam didn't dare turn his head to watch in case it only took those few seconds to lose Steve. He was there when they came in and wrote down, listened and waited, and he was there when they frowned at charts and checked the monitors. 

When those frowns deepened, when those nurses called the doctors, who called other doctors in and said, _this can't be right, we need to double check these numbers,_ when they'd checked and double-checked and triple-checked and smiled, Sam was there.

They tested and x-rayed and scanned and palpated, and stared at Steve with the kind of awe Sam had only seen in a few other faces, and told him the truth of the miracle in front of them. 

_It's going to be all right,_ they said to Sam, because Sam was there. _He's going to live._

And that was when Sam knew. 

Sam didn't sob. He didn't gasp for breath or shake where he sat, but the moisture on his cheeks, moisture he brushed away with ease just as soon as it appeared, was just as much for Riley as it was for himself and Steve.

_Not this time._

And Sam stayed, with his book and his music, so that he was there when Steve woke up like a smartass to coax a smile onto Sam’s face with a mumbled recollection, and there when Steve subsequently went straight back to sleep for another ten hours, the lucky bastard. 

Sam Wilson was there when Steve Rogers lived. 

And Sam read his book with his hand on Steve's wrist, Steve's pulse weak but steady under his fingertips, until eventually Sam slept too.

~

Sam telephoned his mother, and his sister, and got just about the same verbal ass-kicking from both of them that meant a solid ‘I love you.’

He promised to call regularly.

~

When Steve’s eyes opened again, it was early evening, the room filled with the kind of orange glow that made everything easy to look at, and almost hid the pallor of his skin.

“Where's my....my shield?” Steve said softly, still looking vaguely confused at all times. 

Woozy from painkillers that weren’t working enough to keep him under but were working enough to make everything weird for him, Steve’s eyebrows were drawn together, his mouth just a little open. That he remembered their conversation on the Mall at all was one of many positive signs, and that he remembered Sam was…well, probably not that unusual given what they’d all been through during the past few days. But it was still nice to think that Steve Rogers knew who Sam Wilson was.

“By your bed,” Sam told him. “Somebody fished it out and turned it in.”

Steve's eyes moved, but his head stayed still, and he gave up a moment later. What was the point if he couldn't lift his head to look?

And if he'd looked a little ill when Sam told him it had been found, Sam wasn't going to mention it. Weapons could be reissued, but you didn't always think of that when you were in the moment, making your stand.

“Is this still..?” 

“Yeah,” Sam said softly, taking the minute shift of Steve's fingers for the gesture he couldn't yet manage. “Trouble Man. Figured you might like to hear it, since it sums you up pretty good.”

Steve huffed a soft laugh through his nose, then turned his head away to wince. 

Sam rubbed the tips of his fingers over the artery in Steve’s wrist in comfort - trying to laugh on a gut shot had to hurt - and Steve’s hand shifted, moved away.

For a moment or five, Sam felt like an idiot - hand-holding probably wasn’t high on Steve’s list of priorities. And then Steve turned his head back a moment later, confused, to look down. 

Sam looked too, at where their hands were close on the side of Steve’s bed. And then Steve found Sam’s dry palm with his cold fingers and turned his head away again.

However much energy Steve must have used asking two questions and moving his hand, it seemed that it was all he had. He was asleep not a minute later.

~

Steve woke once or twice during the night, blearily asking where he was.

_“ ‘m I home?”_

_“Not yet, man, you’re in the hospital.”_

_“Oh.”_

But he slept better than Sam. 

Sam dreamed of air that dried his tongue and a night so bright it was blinding, thrown from a helicarrier to spiral down off an Austrian mountainside, straight into the path of an RPG with terrified screaming in his ears. He dreamed of footsteps like mortars, falling ever closer with gunmetal gleaming in the light of the fires, gunmetal and an _arm_ that reached out to destroy him, and bullets that hit their mark just as well traveling around corners as they did face to face. He dreamed of watching Steve’s wings fall to pieces and his body turn into Riley’s with a gut shot on the way down.

And when he woke, heart hammering in his chest, and turned his head to check on Steve, he found Steve’s eyes half open, colorless in the darkness of the hospital room, lit enough by the lights of the corridor that they sparkled.

“Sam?” voice rough but low, closer to his own than to the half-strangled wheeze of a man who shouldn’t be alive.

“Yeah,” Sam breathed, “yeah, Steve.”

Steve didn’t say anything to him - they’d both slept in barracks, probably both slept in field hospitals though Sam hadn’t yet had the chance to ask and wasn’t sure he could handle the answer right now. But the point was, they were no strangers to the fitful sleep of other men, and they both knew there wasn’t much to be said that would do the nightmares justice.

Steve was barely awake, hardly focusing, and the effort of trying to do both was draining him visibly, but Steve’s fingers managed to squeeze his own before his eyes slid shut again. Sam couldn’t be sure of what he might have said if either of them had thought it prudent to break the silence with speech, what Steve might really have meant by the gentle pressure of his fingers, but Sam felt better for imagining that it might have been _it’s okay_ no matter how untrue the sentiment.

~

From time to time, Sam had seen articles in glossy magazines when he sat next to someone on the train, or caught glimpses of those informational webpages when he was looking for something unrelated. _Sleep Deprivation Linked To_ heart disease, obesity, depression, _Sleep Essential to_ working at your best, boosting your immune system, clear arteries. 

And Healing. 

Enough studies had been done to show that bodies healed better when they slept, Sam knew that. He’d heard it from his therapist, years ago, often enough. Sam would, years later than the days he spent next to Steve Rogers after the Battle of D.C (even while hating the media for that, couldn’t the papers refer to anything without naming it, without coining a phrase for it?), hear officially that sleep was nothing short of essential to Steve’s healing, like a baby, or a small animal - that Steve healed better when he was unconscious, the serum worked best when it was given no distractions.

By the time he’d hear it confirmed, though, he’d have known it firsthand for years. 

Those first few days in the clear, Sam slept for most of the time too, adrenaline finally giving way to relief, to exhaustion. Steve’s waking periods grew longer, Steve himself grew more coherent.

They talked about Sam’s taste in music for a while, and then Sam’s taste in books. Sam knew that telling Steve the things that were waiting right under his skin would be a bad idea right now. He wouldn’t have called it a relapse - he was in control, he could tell the difference between dreams and waking - but he wanted just as much to grab Steve by the front of his hospital gown and _shake him_ as he wanted to feed him and tuck the blankets tighter and refuse to let anyone who wasn’t Natasha freaking Romanoff walk through the door without manacles and an armed guard. So they talked about how the weather was changing, and Steve would slip and mention things he wanted to talk about but didn’t want to say.

“How…” and then “I don’t…” before silence.

Sam knew better than to push him - not now, it could come later if it had to. Steve had to be replaying it all in his head - all of it, from before he’d woken up in this world and after. At this point, in the relative closeness and relative silence of a guarded hospital room, Steve had to be well aware that the only person who could hear him was sitting right by his side. But now it was raw, open wounds that wouldn’t heal with something so simple as gauze and sleep. If Steve wanted to talk to him, all he had to do was talk. But Sam knew it wouldn’t be that easy. As though it could _ever_ be that easy.

“I swim to shore?” Steve asked, and Sam shook his head slowly.

“I don’t know, man,” he answered, while the music murmured on and the voice in the back of Sam’s mind screamed _all I know is that you fell, and that I couldn’t catch _you_ out of the sky either._

***

By the time Steve had what he could call a fully coherent day - one where he could remember morning and evening and most of the time in between - there came a new problem.

He was bored.

In fact, he was bored enough that he wanted to be up and about, at least to a new floor, or outside and back, or something, anything but he was still being advised to stay in bed. Which was…okay, fair enough, Steve guessed. From what he’d seen the last time they’d changed his dressings, he was out of the woods but not quite ready to go, but it was starting to wear on him - as was the fact that his _wanting_ to move didn’t mean that he _could._

He woke at around five in the morning, itching to go for a run, and then he double-took at the sight of Sam sleeping slack-jawed and silent in the same chair he’d been in since Steve surfaced a couple of days ago, in exactly the same clothes he’d been in a couple of days ago too. And he wasn’t sure what shifted in that moment but something twisted behind Steve’s breastbone, coiled up around his heart and squeezed. The light pulled tones of gold and bronze out of the arches of Sam’s cheekbones and the bridge of his nose, blacks and browns from his eyebrows, and the small, spindly-fingered artist sitting quietly in the corner of Steve’s mind smiled softly and considered whether burnt orange or iron oxide would come closer to doing the highlights justice, whether pencil or pastel might work better for the sweep of his lashes and the fullness of his lips, what weight of paper would suit his skin the most. 

He looked like a photograph - purposefully lit and composed, carefully crafted. Sam looked warm and fuzzy around the edges and, for one awful minute, Steve wasn’t sure Sam was real at all.

He felt the beginnings of panic start to creep up the back of his neck - what if Sam wasn’t real, what if Sam wasn’t here, what if Steve—

But he forced it back a moment later. This was stupid - Sam was alive and here and…

Sam was…

Steve wasn’t so good at being alone, and he’d only learned it recently. He hadn’t let it get to him before, he’d had associates and comrades, or so he’d thought. But Sam?

Sam was his _friend_. A friend of a week, a man who was so new to a life that felt so old that, were Sam anyone else, Steve would still be trying to figure out whether to refer to him by surname or first name. Instead, here was someone who was shaping up to be one hell of a brother in arms, who’d opened his home and his life to Steve just because he’d had the misfortune to meet Captain America one morning, someone Steve had found first instead of someone planted there to gain his trust so it could be used against him.

STRIKE had been at his back until they’d driven a proverbial knife into it (not that they wouldn’t have used a literal blade if they’d gotten the chance), but Sam was different, new, a new friend - kind and caring, and maybe he didn’t know everything but he knew enough, knew more than most. He knew about standing up and fighting for truth, for what was right. 

When they’d been fighting for their lives and the lives of millions of innocents that Steve had sworn to protect, Sam was at his back in a way STRIKE never could have been, in a way Steve hadn’t felt since before the ice had come up to meet him. Sam knew about losing a brother, knew pain and hopelessness, and there would never be any doubt for Steve that Sam was far more able to cope with whatever life threw at him. And Sam had done this once and come out the other side, Sam was someone to strive for, someone to admire and someone to trust, to _really_ trust, someone who might not be able to show the way but would still be there for the journey. After everything, Sam was still here, still waiting, still staying close and Steve had lost so much.

He hadn’t been able to save Bucky - the thought of it made him dizzy with remembered panic, helplessness, grief, even now. He hadn’t been able to save his friends either, not really. They should have grown old together, telling stories and sharing drinks and memories. He hadn’t been able to give Peggy the life he’d wanted so desperately to give her, couldn’t be there now to see it through. Peggy, the Commandos, Bucky, Erskine, his mother, everyone - _everyone_ \- had fallen away from him.

Sam knew him, got him, understood him better than (Steve was pretty sure) just about anyone. Sam had seen so much, endured so much, had lost so much. And then he’d spent so much time becoming a person who could hold his head up high. And now here he sat, sleeping in a worn chair whose padding was squashed and whose fabric was threadbare, with scabs healing over on his face, bruises fading all over his body, flightless and exhausted from a fight none of them should have had to fight, and still waiting. Still here by Steve’s side.

Steve felt his throat close, his chest tighten, and he looked away from Sam as his eyes prickled, staring instead at a bland hospital ceiling that was painted in blocks of the rosy-gold light of the early morning. Looking at Sam was harder than it ought to be, brought with it a wealth of emotion that Steve wasn’t sure he knew how to keep in check. 

After everything he’d lost, after all the people he’d known who had fallen away, and after all the things he’d seen and done and lived through even when he hadn’t wanted to, Sam was here.

Sam was hope.

***

It was around the fourth day that Steve’s stomach growled loudly enough that his cheeks colored. Not much, of course - it was a strange dusting of rose against skin that was still sallow. Still, Steve lifted his hand slightly, stopping himself before he ended up pressing against the bullet wound.

“Sorry,” he said, a frog in his throat but a smile on his lips.

Sam fought a smile of his own. 

A man of Steve’s age and stature ought to be eating one hell of a lot to maintain himself, more during recovery - and that was without the Serum.

He didn’t much like leaving Steve alone, not when Hydra could be anywhere, but Steve knew the armed guards - a rotation of six of the men who’d been fighting _with_ them a few days ago, instead of against, one of whom had a sling of his own and most of whom had a fair few cuts and bruises.

Sam turned in his seat to consider them, at the straight-backed posture of two armed guards who probably should have been at home with a hot cup of coffee and a blanket if not in a hospital bed themselves. And then he turned back to look at Steve.

“Lemme talk to the nurse,” he said.

~

Half an hour later, true to his word and full of the kind of satisfaction only “doctors’ orders” could bring, Sam came back with a cardboard double cup-holder, and a handful of paper bags fit to burst at their seams.

He handed two of the bags off to the armed guards, who both accepted with a grateful smile - maybe it wasn’t exactly protocol to eat on duty but it wasn’t as though they had anyone to answer to now, and they’d been on this particular shift for a good ten hours. 

One of them opened the door for him as his hands were full, and Sam gave him a nod of thanks.

“He doing okay?” the guy said, and Sam shrugged one shoulder. 

“He’s awake and he’s hungry,” he answered. 

The other guy laughed softly as Sam walked in.

“Remind me to tell you about meeting Cap in the mess hall after missions,” he said, and they both turned back to stand guard, their brown paper bags the only evidence to show that they’d moved at all.

It was nice, Sam thought, breathing out a sigh. These guys didn’t seem like Hydra - as far as he and Nat could tell, every Hydra rat had run from their sinking ship. No doubt they’d have to be flushed out of the woodwork later but, mixed metaphors aside, Sam felt far better knowing these guys knew Steve, knowing these guys had stories and fond memories of Steve, than he would have if they’d been randomly assigned.

“So I cornered a doctor,” Sam said.

From the way Steve’s head lifted and the bleariness of his gaze, he must have been sleeping, and Sam might not have woken him if he’d known. 

Then again, he might have woken him anyway - Steve needed to eat more than hospital food if he was ever going to get his strength up. Plus, there was the opportunity to watch Steve’s momentary confusion at being woken from the semi-sleep he’d slipped into while Sam was out, not to mention the fact that Steve’s hair was sticking up in places and his skin was sleep-soft and pinker now than it had been before, his eyes half open and a small line of confusion between his eyebrows.

“That’s nice?” Steve said, and Sam rolled his eyes, shutting the door behind him with a bump of his hip.

“Yeah, nice for you,” Sam answered. “High calorie, high protein. That means pizza, hamburgers and ice cream for dessert for you, for the foreseeable future.”

The corner of Steve’s mouth ticked up as his eyebrows raised, obviously interested.

“Yeah?” he said, but he sounded skeptical, stifling a yawn.

“Yeah!” Sam said, plonking himself back down in his seat as he set the cardboard cup-holder on the little nightstand next to Steve’s bed. “Really, I mean it. She gave me a pamphlet and everything.”

Steve snorted, and Sam set the paper bags down too, ignoring Steve’s stomach growling again as the scent of meat and warm bread started to properly fill the room, waving off Steve’s apology with it.

“I-”

“Forget it, man, I’ll find you the pamphlet after food.”

He started uncurling the tops of the bags, and damn if Steve didn’t sit up a little straighter, leaning forward (though he still winced) as Sam passed him one of them.

“What is..?” Steve said, peering down into it, and then he trailed off, staring for a moment or two before looking back at Sam, face split with a wide grin. “ _Sam._ ”

“I know, I know,” Sam answered. “Thank me later.”

Steve was still having a little trouble moving, so that Sam ended up pinching the bottom of the bag to anchor it while Steve lifted the napkin-wrapped gourmet cheeseburger - a double with cheddar, mozzarella, onions, bacon, pepperoni and a couple of other things Sam couldn’t remember - out of the bag with his good arm.

He spent a couple of seconds staring at the thing in awe, and then didn’t even look at Sam again before taking the biggest bite he could manage.

He made a noise that was somewhere between a moan and a growl, pleased enough that Sam snickered, and then stared at it in his hand as he shook his head.

“Oh wow, that’s good,” he said through his substantial mouthful, lifting the whole thing to cover his mouth a second later with a meek kind of look in his eye. “Sorry.”

Sam laughed.

“Man, I don’t care about manners, go ahead. You earned it.”

Steve looked so absurdly grateful in that moment, so relieved and so _pleased_ that Sam couldn’t tell if he’d entirely imagined the sheen over Steve’s eyes. But Steve concentrated pretty hard on devouring his cheeseburger, so he couldn’t be sure.

“And hey, I brought coffee with cream, too.”

“Sam,” Steve said around bread and meat and cheese, “you’re an absolute saint.”

~

By the last few mouthfuls of his _third_ enormous burger, Steve tipped his head back against the pillow as he chewed and swallowed, to stare at nothing in particular, eyes half closed.

Sam waited until he’d finished blotting the grease off his lips with a clean napkin - not that there’d been much; Steve evidently wasn’t about to let any go to waste if he could get it in his mouth - before holding his hand out for Steve’s latest paper bag.

Steve managed to get the napkin into it before handing it over, and then he sighed heavily, letting his eyes drift shut.

“You good with just the three?” Sam asked, and Steve nodded minutely.

“That was amazing,” he said, sighing through his nose a moment later. “I just…that was really…”

“Go to sleep,” Sam told him - Steve was properly full for the first time in four days, and that was just the time Sam knew about - and he had every right to feel lethargic. “You go to sleep, man, I’m not going anywhere.”

And the corner of Steve’s mouth ticked up again, even though the rest of him was perfectly still, almost asleep already.

“Thanks,” he breathed, and Sam nodded, fishing a somewhat less ridiculous cheeseburger (a single double-cheeseburger with bacon) out a bag for himself.

“Anytime,” he answered.

Steve, as far as Sam could tell, was already asleep.

~ 

Steve woke by the evening, just about in time for dinner, and Sam called for pizza because he felt like pizza, and they ate in relative silence because _food_. And, though Steve wasn’t going to be running laps and lifting cars any time soon, he expressed his desire to move around under his own steam fairly soon after the ninth slice of his second pizza.

“I feel like I should walk it off?”

“No,” Sam answered. “I don’t care about the Serum, the answer’s no.”

“Sam-”

“Steve-”

“It’s been four days,” he said, and Sam sat forward in his seat, eyebrows raised, looking about as far from pleased as Steve had seen him look so far.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Sam said, not serious at all as he turned in his chair. “I’m sorry, I cannot _just_ have heard you tell me you’re _bored_ waiting out a goddamned _gut_ shot. Did I just hear you tell me you’re bored waiting out a gut shot?”

Steve blew out a breath and let his head fall back against the pillow, searching the ceiling as though it would give him answers. And then he rolled his head on the pillow and looked at Sam.

“Did you bring dessert?”

***

When Steve could actually move himself enough to do normal things (things like going to the bathroom), Sam averted his eyes and did his best not to hear when the nurses came to let Steve know _there may be some slight discomfort during removal, and some lingering afterwards_ and told him _just breathe._

And when it was done and Steve, looking pale and irritated and halfway to mortified, wanted to put on his boxer shorts under the gown and walk to the bathroom on his own two feet, and do what he needed to under his own steam instead of via a plastic tube? Sam _let_ him. 

No _are you sure you've got this?_ , no _let me get somebody for you, man._ Sam just slung an arm under Steve's good shoulder to help him up, stood still for the most part but helped hike up the waistband of his underwear when Steve needed a hand and, once Steve was up and stable, let him do what he needed to. After everything Sam had seen, it was a great comfort to him that Steve let him help.

So Sam stood to one side while Steve took a leak, unwilling to leave him alone just yet, but looked away and let Steve get on with it without pressing him for his condition - just a silent presence, unwatching and unmoving. And then one hand, warm and soothing, on the small of Steve's back when Steve tipped his head back with a hiss, eyes screwed shut with a muttered, “'Slight discomfort' my left foot, _ow_ ” as he curled his toes on the tile.

He helped him shave once or twice, and wasn’t that something? Golden stubble against Steve’s jaw, and something twisted inside Sam to see it, something about it brought out the kind of age Steve never really showed. Sure, he didn’t look ninety-five, but he looked much more like an old man in the body of a kid who’d seen too much. Sam could see why he kept himself clean-shaven, and offered to help because it meant something to Steve. He tried not to think about having done it for Riley once, when they’d first got their wings and Riley had planted his fool hands on his pack’s outer casing fresh on terra firma.

It wasn’t even the engines - whatever tech had gone into them had insulated well enough that the jets were nothing to worry about. But sleek, shiny metal got pretty damned hot in the desert sun, and it had been a day or two before Riley had managed to…

Sam wasn’t sure how healthy it was to think of it now. Two blond men, older in mind than in body, who’d fallen where Sam couldn’t catch them. 

Only, one of them had lived. And maybe he’d wind up thinking about Riley down the line, when he was at home and alone where one melted tag lay secure in a safe and one photograph sat in a file Sam had learned not to open and stare at every day. Maybe in a week, he’d take out that file again and look at that photograph and feel all the things he was going to feel without worrying about the mission.

But right now, it felt half like a cruel joke, and half like a second chance.

So he focused on the second half and did what he could, did what he would have for Riley. And he tried not to think too hard about that, either, about how much he’d missed the presence of a young, blond, crazy white boy to roll his eyes at and make bad jokes with and follow to hell and back, and how quickly Steve had managed to become someone he wanted to spend time with, someone he _wanted_ to follow orders for.

He kept his eye on Steve, helped him where he needed helping, let him be where he needed to do things for himself. Disabused him of the notion to find a hotel when he decided somehow it was a good idea.

“ _Hell_ no,” Sam answered, “ _Captain America_ in a _hotel_!? Not when I have a bed just as nice and probably closer to the kitchen.”

Steve just smiled a little, shook his head as he looked away, and then he raised his good (slightly better than the other one) arm to scratch his fingers through his hair. “I hope you have a good couch, too,” he said, attempting to put his meaning across with the expression on his face.

Which Sam understood and undercut in the same breath. “I have two, but it’s not gonna be a problem for you – you ain't sleeping on either one of ‘em.” 

“Sam!”

“Come on, Cap,” he said, voice a little softer now. “Okay, how about, you can take the bed until you're healed and _then_ you can have a couch if you want it. Deal?” And then he held out his hand – his left hand, so that Steve would have no problem shaking it.

Slowly, unable to hide his grin, Steve shook his head, and then he drew a deep breath that hurt at the injuries but made his head feel a little clearer. “And how about your shower?” he said, shaking Sam's offered hand.

Sam just raised his eyebrows. “You'll _fit,_ ” he said, “but I don't know how much maneuvering room you're gonna have.” Steve laughed, for the first time in days. “I don't even wanna know how much showergel you go through, you got like, what, twice my surface area?”

This time, the laughing hurt, and it cut Steve short a little, left him breathless, and he pressed his good hand to his stomach. Sam settled his palm on Steve's good shoulder.

“I'm gonna get the car, you try and go five minutes without injuring yourself.”

Steve did his best to laugh with a little more restraint this time.

Steve was not Riley, would never - could never - replace him. Nobody could, Captain America or no. And Sam couldn’t bring Riley back. But he could help Steve find Bucky Barnes, and maybe do Riley proud, too.

***

Sam shuffled in the front door with Steve’s duffel held under one arm, the straps slung over his shoulder. He managed to hold the door for Steve, who shuffled on in right after him, left leg still too sore to put his full weight on, right arm still in an envelope sling. Sam heard Steve draw a big, hitching lungful of air.

“Y’okay?” Sam asked, dumping Steve’s duffel by the dining room chair as he turned to look at him.

Steve, looking about as stylishly smart-casual as Sam had ever seen him, in faded denim jeans and a white tee, as well as a charcoal gray suit jacket, looked around the place as though he hadn’t been there before, as though it were all new. Still though, he only wore the jacket on one arm - it hung over the bad shoulder to let him wear his sling instead and, while the tee was nice, a large, square taped piece of gauze was visible across Steve’s stomach underneath it.

“My place smells like surface cleaner,” Steve told him, good hand lifting absently to cover that square of gauze.

_And gunpowder._

“Come here and sit down,” Sam said not unkindly, pointing at the couch. “Get off your feet.”

“My leg is fine,” Steve answered, but Sam saw his fingers brush the back of his thigh as he started to, stiffly, make his way to the couch.

These were not injuries that were going to just go away, these weren’t fading bruises and healing scabs. This was _bullet wounds_ that Steve was insisting on walking around on. That kind of thing was dangerous. Stupid. Completely expected now that Sam had known Steve for more than ten minutes.

He wasn’t Steve’s babysitter, wasn’t Steve’s nurse, but Sam didn’t doubt he was going to need to keep an eye on Steve, at least just a little bit.

Still it was nice, he supposed, that Steve, what…liked the way his house smelled? He could take that, he guessed.

“So what does my house smell like?” Sam asked, wandering over as Steve eased himself down onto the couch, to set out a couple coasters.

“Leather, fabric and wood mostly, with that nice air freshener thing you have,” Steve said.

Sam raised an eyebrow at him as he sprawled into the cushions - Natasha had to have picked those clothes out for him, there was no way he’d picked anything like it for himself. Straight-cut stonewashed jeans and a tee that might as well have been a compression shirt.

“I don’t wanna sound like a bad movie,” Sam told him, “but that shirt looks a little tight for that dressing.”

Steve snorted quietly, and then sort of peered over his shoulder.

“I have no idea what the hell is in that duffel either,” he said. 

Sam looked at it too.

“Yeah, I figured,” he said eventually, moving toward it. “I’m’a take a look - you want coffee?”

Steve settled back into the cushions, head back, eyes closed.

“ _God_ , yes,” he said.

Sam went over to the counter and put the coffee on to percolate, and then he heaved the duffel bag up onto the table, unzipping it to pull out a phone, a tablet, two other pairs of pants, one pair of good shoes (Steve had traveled back to Sam’s place in white sneakers,) two other tees, and a pair of pajamas, as well as five pairs of jersey boxer shorts, five pairs of socks, a disposable razor and a toothbrush. And a hooded sweatshirt with a familiar roundel on the front. 

God only knew how she’d managed to find a Captain America hoodie to actually fit Captain America, but it looked warm, sturdy and (most importantly) big enough that it would be loose on him.

“You’re set for two days, four or five if you wanna slob it out.”

“So five,” Steve answered, and Sam smiled.

“You got pajamas and underwear, and you got a couple of changes,” Sam told him. “You good with that or we need to go out and find you some-”

“It’s fine, Sam,” Steve answered “It’s fine.”

Sam frowned at the back of Steve’s head.

“Great,” he said. “But you’re gonna put this on instead.”

Steve didn’t turn to look at him - absolutely no surprises there, even Steve wasn’t dumb enough to twist his body with a bullet wound in his stomach. So Sam took it over to him, holding it out like a prize. Steve looked at it, snorted, and looked up at Sam. Sam raised his eyebrows.

“Hey, Mr Fifty-Twenty-Twenty-”

“ _Fifty?_ ” 

“-I didn’t pack your bag. I wouldn’t know your measurements.”

“You say that like she’s got any reason to know ‘em,” Steve answered, heaving himself forward, shrugging the jacket off his bad shoulder before waggling his other arm to get it free.

Sam stood in front of him, tugging the fabric back for him and draping the jacket across the back of the couch when it was off Steve’s shoulders. 

“I’m’a need to get your arm outta that sling if we’re gettin’ that t-shirt offa you. You want help with that?”

Steve looked down at the sling for a moment or two, and then at Sam via his shoulder.

“Thanks,” he said, trying to be apologetic about it.

As though Sam hadn’t seen (and been through) way worse than assisting in a disrobe. 

“Don’t mention it,” he answered, reaching around Steve’s neck as Steve ducked his head.

Steve’s hair was short, darker at the nape of his neck, and a curved red line sat just below his hairline. The helmet, Sam realized. Padded though it must be, Steve had been through one hell of a session of hand to (metal) hand, and there were still hand-shaped bruises in places. He didn’t doubt the Winter Soldier had a few of his own but still…

Steve’s face, too, could look better. Wasn’t as though it was ever going to look terrible, but people outside the service tended to forget that you could injure in some pretty bad places. The line next to Steve’s mouth had been a weird one - Sam had mistaken it for a smile the first day or two, almost smiling back when he saw Steve’s face in his periphery, remembering just in time the black, spider-legged stitches poking out of Steve’s skin there instead.

Steve’s right eye was just a little puffy now, but seeing it swollen shut and yellow with bruising in the hospital was something Sam was pretty sure would never leave him.

Steve hissed in pain as Sam eased his arm out of the sling, chewing his lips when Sam brought the strap over his head.

“How you gonna manage this one?” Steve asked, and Sam watched him for a moment or two before beginning to tug the hem of Steve’s tee out of the waistband of his jeans. 

“Come on,” Sam said. “Get your good arm out first – it'll be easier that way.”

Steve wrinkled his nose as he started trying to pull his better arm back into the shirtsleeve. “I'll stretch it out,” he said.

“I don't know if you've met yourself,” Sam said, reaching around Steve with both hands to hold the fabric to make it easier, “but I'm pretty sure it's stretched already.”

That at least let Steve pull his arm inside the shirt, and then Sam bunched the fabric up and held it and stretched it and passed it over Steve's head so it wouldn't pull against his bad shoulder, easing the bundle of material down Steve’s bad arm and away.

Sam wasn’t really sure what he expected when he took Steve’s shirt off except that what he saw _wasn’t it._

When you spent a few days by a guy’s hospital bed, you got used to the face. The stitched up gash by his mouth, the now-mostly-healed bruising over what had once been an amazing mess of his cheekbone, the slight swelling around his once-swollen-shut eye. But the _rest_ of him was another matter entirely. 

The skin on his shoulder was mottled brown and ocher, fading to purple around the near-black scab of the knife-wound, and the skin over his stomach looked the same, before it disappeared beneath the square of gauze. Sam knew that, beneath it, a black scab like the circle from a hole punch was healing just about where his diaphragm was, and there was a matching one on his back.

 _Through and through_.

Along Steve’s ribcage, on Steve’s left hand side, there was a fairly deep gash front to back from what Sam gathered was a bullet that had “only grazed” Steve, instead of, for example, remaining in-situ like the one they’d had to remove from his thigh.

Steve’s neck and shoulders were a mass of bruising, too - punches to face and body would do that to you - something Sam only knew because he’d seen it himself - and Steve’s back looked now like he sat in the dappled shadows beneath a tree on a sunny day, patches of yellow and brown scattered across his skin from shoulders to waistband (and all the way down to his thighs, Sam knew) that had once been striking blue and purple. Which was what happened when you hit water back first at a speed higher than you’d travel down the freaking highway. 

Some of it made Sam ache in sympathy on top of his own injuries, the ghost of old wounds settled deep enough into his bones that he could feel them still on some days.

“How you doin’?” Sam asked, and Steve looked up at him, eyes wide, smile tired, before his eyelashes fluttered down.

Part of Sam wanted to keep his hand under Steve’s chin, hold his head up just to make sure Steve was okay, to make sure Steve wasn’t about to lie to him.

“ ‘M tired,” Steve answered, and Sam set about bunching the sleeve of the hoodie up to get it up Steve’s bad arm. 

It would give him more room to move, and wouldn’t chafe the gauze.

Steve sat pretty much still to begin with, letting Sam ease the thick, warm fabric up his forearm, then his bicep, then his shoulder. He winced when he had to duck his head to get it through the neck of the hoodie, and again when he tried to get his other arm in the sleeve, and shivered as Sam pulled the collar over his head, fingers brushing the back of Steve’s neck.

“Sorry, man,” Sam said offhandedly, and Steve’s voice, muffled by the fabric, answered him anyway.

“S’okay, s’just nobody touches me ‘cept doctors usually.”

He made it into the hoodie eventually, having wiggled around enough that his head had come through straight into the hood. Sam laughed, and knocked the hood back off his head as Steve opened his eyes.

For a second, Steve didn’t say anything, and Sam scrutinized the cuts and the bruises and the grazes, and the huge purple bags under Steve’s eyes.

“I’d ask if you were sure about coffee but it doesn’t affect you, right?”

“Right,” Steve answered, his voice rough. “I can still appreciate the drink though.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m getting to it,” Sam said, moving away, and Steve looked mortified for a moment.

“That’s not-”

“I’m yankin’ your chain, big guy, just relax,” Sam told him, but Steve was making an odd face when Sam spared him a glance - a sort of cross between sad and nauseated.

“Please don’t call me that,” he said. 

Sam frowned but nodded.

“Hey, sure thing, Steve,” he said. “I got you.”

Steve clenched his teeth, dropped Sam’s gaze as he nodded, and Sam went over to the percolator by way of distraction. He didn’t need a reason - that Steve had asked was enough. Obviously, Sam wasn’t the first person to call him that. 

“How do you take your coffee?” he asked, and Steve seemed just to revel in sitting still. 

He'd been lying still for days in the hospital and he'd made it abundantly clear that he’d been itching to move by the time they'd let him go but, somehow, the walk to the sidewalk, the ride back to Sam's and the change of shirt had worn him out.

“As it comes,” he said on a breath. 

Sam knew that years of poverty and then rationing and then _war_ must have taught Steve a lot about preferences, in the same way that two tours and a not entirely comfortable childhood had taught Sam – mainly that a man could live without a surprising number of them. Somewhere big enough to sit comfortably enough that he could sleep, and food that wasn't poisonous, and you could probably pretty much just exist however.

“Starbucks gotta love a guy like you,” Sam said, mugs clinking on the sideboard. “Lemme guess, you'll have a whatever-the-barista-feels-up-to?”

“If it's not too much trouble,” Steve answered, yawning a moment later when Sam chuckled.

It didn’t take Sam long to finish making the coffees, but what little conversation there had been died down into nothing by the time Sam was putting the milk back in the refrigerator and, by the time he had both mugs in hand, Steve was sitting slouched forward and stock still where Sam had left him on the couch.

Sam had seen pictures of Steve Rogers before the serum, of course. Everybody had. The same three available images were everywhere in anything that spoke about him. One of him at boot camp, squinting in the sun in a uniform that hung on him like a tent. One full length image of him, head to toe, standing to attention to the best of his ability in uniform, with a cap that threatened to swallow his head. One of him during Project Rebirth, in that same uniform, shaking the hand of an older (but not old) man in a white lab coat, who most people remembered at the very least to be 'the scientist who'd made Steve Rogers into Captain America.'

Well, firstly, that was wrong. Steve Rogers had always been Captain America, Erskine had just given him the serum that made his body match his willpower, his stubbornness. 

And secondly, not one of those three images had really made Sam look at Steve and think of someone small the way seeing him in a baggy Cap hoodie did now.

Steve was still younger than Sam, if you didn't count all that time in the ice, by three or four years. He didn't really look young in the same way he didn't really look small but, like this, Sam could see the inexperience and the weariness in him the same way he could picture the guy he'd been before the serum.

Vulnerable was the wrong word, too, but it kinda fit in there, just a little. The cracks weren't beginning to show, but Sam got the idea it was less because they weren't there and more because they were being held closed by sheer force of will.

Steve was staring at nothing, understandably. What people called a thousand-yard stare was more than that really, he went further away than that. Sam had been there. It wasn't distance you were staring out across, but time, reality.

“Steve,” he said softly, and waited for his voice to register.

After a moment or two, Steve blinked slowly, eyes coming back into focus, and he drew a deep breath as his body became animated again.

“Hmm?” he said, turning his head to look first at Sam's face and then at the mugs in his hands. “Oh.”

“Cream and sugar,” Sam told him. “Just in case.”

Steve didn’t raise an eyebrow but it looked like a close-run thing. It was a good thing, really - Steve’s face probably wouldn’t thank him for it at this point. 

“Milk not fancy enough for you?” he said, and Sam shrugged.

“I just wasn't sure if milk was good enough for the First Avenger.”

“Ugh,” Steve pulled a face, reaching up to press a cautious hand to his bruises a moment later. 

He reached out with his left hand and took the mug, smiling wanly as Sam sat down, settling the cup on his knee as Sam took a sip.

Sam let himself listen to the house: the A/C, the hum of the refrigerator, the drip of the tap, the creak of the wood settling, and let himself hear the world around them too. Distant traffic, birds singing. It was all there to hear if you listened for it.

Steve was drifting again – not to mention listing. He sat with his head and his upper body tilted to one side, and his eyes half closed, his good hand curled around the coffee mug.

Sam liked these mugs. The ceramic was nice, not too thick, not too brittle, letting enough warmth through that he could hold the thing comfortably and let the warmth bleed into fingers he, all too often, didn't realize were cold.

Steve managed to get his own mug to his mouth and took a sip.

“Wow, this is good coffee.”

“Nice to know you can still appreciate the finer things,” Sam answered. “I broke out the good stuff.”

Steve frowned and turned his head to look at him. “You didn't have to do that,” Steve told him, and then, “way to my heart is pancakes.”

“Oh, I got pancake game,” Sam said. “My pancake game is solid. You know, you're a terrible liar.”

“So people keep telling me,” Steve answered, rolling his head to look at Sam. “What am I lying about this time?”

Sam just fixed him with the most serious stare he could and said, “you're the _waffle_ type.” 

Steve laughed, a short, soft burst of sound that looked like it felt good against everything else but left him out of breath all the same. 

“It’s like you’re in my brain,” he answered.

Sam snorted into his coffee, and Steve chuckled at him when he started coughing.

“My mother used to call that 'Divine Retribution,'” he said, and Sam rolled his eyes even while he was trying to clear his throat.

“You wanna know what I call it?” Sam asked, leaving the answer up to Steve.

For a little while, they sat in silence, drinking coffee and being alive in a world that felt a lot quieter here, in Sam’s house, on Sam’s couch, than it actually was, until Steve sighed, wincing a moment later. Sam glanced at his watch and figured it was probably close to some kind of meal time.

“Hey,” he said, and Steve looked at him, eyebrows raised in question. “You wanna eat?” 

He scrunched his face up, thinking about it.

“ ‘M too tired,” he murmured, and then he swung his head to look at Sam. “Thanks though.”

Sam nodded in acknowledgment and took another sip of his coffee. Steve went to do the same, managing to get his fingers through the handle to lift it to his lips and wow, his fingers looked kind of bad, too.

“Time issit?” Steve asked, and Sam glanced at his watch. 

“Thirteen hundred,” he answered, and Steve nodded slowly.

“I'm gonna have the coffee,” he said. “Hit the hay for a while.”

“Sure thing,” Sam told him, kind of pleased – although this was probably more to do with stress than regular naps being doctors' orders. “You need help gettin' upstairs?”

Steve took a long draught of his coffee and then turned his head a little toward Sam's staircase.

“I have to get upstairs,” he said, blinking. 

Sam chuckled softly and looked over at the stairs, too.

“You kinda do if you want to go to bed,” he said, and Steve snorted. 

“I said hit the hay,” he countered, and Sam raised his eyebrows.

“You're still tryin' to take the couch?”

Steve actually smiled, teeth and all, as he laughed, and then he gasped, nearly dropped his mug from suddenly weak fingers, and Sam grabbed for it and took it out of Steve's hand as Steve moaned, eyes squeezed shut.

“God,” Steve muttered, sinking into the back of the couch, pressing his good hand to his stomach now that it was free. “I should'a thought'a that.”

He took a couple of seconds to breathe, not quite pressing his stomach, but definitely trying to alleviate some of the pain with pressure.

“Careful,” Sam told him, although he didn't really need to tell him. 

Laughing on a gut wound was just about nobody’s idea of fun.

Steve just nodded tightly, breathing hard through his nose with his jaw clenched so tightly the muscles in his cheek were twitching.

“I keep forgetting it goes all the way through,” he said, and Sam watched him carefully, still holding Steve's mug a little way away as goosebumps rippled down over his body - _all the way through_.

He held the mug forward when Steve opened his eyes again, and Steve heaved himself away from the back of the couch, curling his body forward to take it.

“Thanks,” he whispered, grabbing another mouthful or three while he had the mug in his grasp. “S'is good coffee.”

“I told you, man,” Sam answered, “I broke out the good stuff.”

Steve nodded, sketched him a little thank-you salute with the mug, and the corner of his mouth twitched when Sam huffed a laugh through his nose.

“Listen,” Steve said, catching the coffee left on his lips with his tongue, “I swear I'll sleep on the bed tonight...”

Sam rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah, you can nap on the couch,” he said, “but don't crunch up, okay? Spread out if you can. And if you can't, and you really can't get up the stairs tonight, I'll haul a mattress down, okay?”

“I'll be okay by then,” Steve said, but he nodded anyway.

Steve set the mug down on the coaster on the coffee table, and then he settled back into the couch cushions, eyes closed, hands in his lap.

“You need a blanket or a pillow or...?” Sam asked, but Steve shook his head minutely. 

“Nh-nhh,” he answered, blowing out a long breath through his nose as his hands went slack.

~

The house was unnervingly quiet with Steve asleep, and it wasn't that Sam was unused to being alone in his own place. Sometimes he'd bring friends over but, the majority of the time, he was content with a good book, or to get a little paperwork done.  
This was different. This was keeping watch, and it was kind of difficult to relax, even in his own home, knowing he had a man who was not only injured in a manner that ought to have been beyond recovery, but also wanted by one of the worst, most far-reaching organizations in human history.

Hydra had changed – of course they had. In this day and age, you couldn't wander around double air-punching and go unnoticed. But they were damned good at playing the long game and, despite the fact that it was unlikely they'd foreseen the collapse of their main branch, Sam couldn't help but feel vulnerable in a space protected by only wooden doors and glass windows, with no other type of reinforcement. 

He looked at Steve, whose head was back, lips parted, long eyelashes resting against his cheek and his whole, huge, damaged body passed out right there on Sam's couch, and he shook his head slowly. A year ago – hell, a month ago – if someone had told Sam that Captain America would be passed out on his couch after a handful of people, Sam included, had brought down a secret group of radicalized Nazi scientists holed up in a government organization, well...

Sam laughed just thinking it – you couldn't make this shit up. It was crazy, no doubt about it.

What the hell was he going to do now? What the hell was _the free world_ going to do now? How many decisions had been made in the past – what, seventy years? 

Sam could have said right then, looking at Steve, that he knew. But he didn't yet or, at least, wasn't aware of knowing.

Steve still looked a mess.

Steve's whole personality seemed to have melted out of him. The permanent furrow between his eyebrows, the broad-shouldered, straight-backed soldier all gone, replaced by some blond kid who'd got plain beat up, napping in his living room after getting the living shit kicked out of him. 

Sam fetched a book, instead of replaying every moment and wondering how many people they'd saved versus how many people they'd lost. He made himself a new cup of coffee, turned the A/C down a little. 

Would he have done the same thing in Steve's place? Would he have listened, if it were Riley, would he have let himself be told that there was nothing to be done? Maybe.

_No._

But it hadn't brought Steve anything they didn't already understand. Steve had beaten the Winter Soldier and replaced the targeting blade and been shot and stabbed and beaten, but they'd won. And did the ends justify the means? Would Sam have said, if it had been Riley, if someone had told him Riley didn't know him, would Sam have said 'he will'? 

And would he have said it with such conviction?

And would it matter now, even if it had been Riley, if Riley had proven otherwise?

He read four pages before the book mentioned some stupid metaphor about flying, and then Sam was falling from the sky and tucking his legs in as the rockets chased after him, swooping down and avoiding the shattered glass, dodging fighter planes and quinjets, twisting through the air with smoke at his heels. 

And now he had nothing. For one, single afternoon, he'd had them back. He'd been able to pick up his feet and fly, and there'd been no time to savor it. No time to feel the air over his skin, to catch an updraft and climb, to swoop and soar and weave and dip because it was all second-nature, even after so long. And there'd been something else to deal with. Instead, James Buchanan Barnes, straight out of history books and museum displays and nightmares, tore the wings from his back and pushed him down.  
Looking at Steve, there was a stupid metaphor here, too, Sam was sure. Icarus or something. 

And it felt terrible that his blood boiled for it, he felt guilty that he should feel this way. That he was most angry because, out of everything that had happened, he didn't have his wings. 

He'd seen interviews, read articles – astronauts said things to friends and family that wound up hurting more than the worst insults. The best day of these peoples' lives, though married and with children, was still the day they looked out at the earth from all the way up in space. Nothing, he remembered one of them saying, compared to it. You'd do a hell of a lot to get there, but you'd do anything to go back. 

And, right now, when he was tired and sore and still jittery days later – right now, when it was a bad idea and he wasn't thinking clearly and the free world was in turmoil – he'd do anything to go back.

Bucky Barnes took his wings. James Buchanan Barnes _grounded_ him. And maybe part of Sam was irrationally angry that Steve Rogers had let him – ludicrous. Ridiculous. Steve had already been thrown over the edge but all the what ifs, what if he'd never met Steve, what if Natasha hadn't retrieved his wings, what if, what if, what if swam around and around and around-

He needed to do something. Actively get up and do something, before he went crazy stewing about it.

He picked up his phone – was it even still safe? - and texted Angela.

_Hey. You up for a little one on one?_

Then he stood up and went to put his mug in the kitchen. He nearly dropped the thing when she answered straight away.

 _Whenever you need,_ she'd written. _Time and date – stay safe._

 _Day after tomorrow, 1pm,_ he answered. _You too._

Tomorrow would have been better, but Steve might not be well enough to be left by himself then. 

Treadmill, he figured, and music on his phone, headphones. He could just let his body and his mind run and not have to deal with it. And, obviously, not wake Steve.

~

When Sam couldn't run any longer on the treadmill (he'd been taking breaks to turn the music off and listen out), he took a shower, changed back into his day clothes instead of his exercise clothes.

He considered jerking off – clean and soothing water, the fact that he was alone and the sound would cover anything he couldn't hold back, all that pent-up energy, the shaking in his hands that might go away with the careful application of some natural endorphins – but he didn't. It didn't feel right to do it, didn't sit well enough with him. The right headspace was hard to find so soon after everything that had happened, and he kind of didn't want to with Steve in the house. Steve was recovering – a whole lot of DC was recovering – and a lot of people weren't going to get the chance. 

He'd made the mistake of checking his office email on his work notebook and he'd had an awful lot of notifications about therapy time, about people signing up to groups and people looking for a helping hand.

DC had been hard on him, and on Steve, but it looked like it was going to be damned hard on the VA, too, and everyone involved there. 

When Riley died, he'd spent a long time isolated. He'd also spent a long time having friends-with-benefits sex with his best friend. She'd been a lot more understanding about it than Sam had been forthcoming. But what was he supposed to do now?

He couldn't go for life-affirming sex with Steve – although the thought of it was interesting enough that he mentally revisited his idea to jerk off until he found it wasn't so much a temptation as a revulsion. But he didn't really think either of them were in a good enough place for that right now, even if Steve were as interested as he'd seemed that morning on the Mall. 

By the time Sam got out of his shower, freshly scrubbed and feeling a little more human, the shadows were long in the gold light across the floor, and he figured it was about time to consider eating something for an evening meal.

He wouldn't get Chinese, or Thai, didn't really want Indian. He didn't think his stomach was settled enough for him to manage anything spicy (he'd run it by Steve, of course. Steve could probably eat a horse right now and be fine) but he didn't particularly want to cook either.

He went downstairs in socked feet and padded over to the kitchen to press go on the percolator again, and then he collected Steve's mug from the table and went to get them both a refill.

This, at least, he could do. It was methodical and reasonably calming and Steve scared the absolute shit out of him when he went to put his mug back down with a fresh coffee.

“Hi,” he mumbled, at just about the same time his whole body shifted, coming back online.

“Jesus!” Sam said, managing not to throw coffee all over himself and Steve. “Shit, man.”

“Sorry,” Steve said, wincing as he pushed himself upright, yawning a moment later. “Sorry, Sam.”

Sam tried not to frown at him – it wasn't Steve's fault that Sam was jumpy, no matter how he thought about it. Hydra had been hiding in SHIELD, Hydra had created three enormous helicarriers to shoot twenty million people simultaneously, Hydra had taken Sam's wings from him and brought back the memories he'd buried.

All Steve had done was bug him on his morning jog.

Sam had opened his home, Sam had followed Steve around, Sam had gotten out and gone back in for Captain America but, really, Sam had followed Steve Rogers even though Steve Rogers didn't ask. Maybe even _because_ Steve Rogers hadn't asked.

And Sam also knew how anger and grieving and all the rest of it went – it wasn't right to be angry at Steve. But part of him was, and he'd have to watch that part. The part that couldn't figure out why he'd go back and face the Winter Soldier, the part that didn't understand why he'd had his wings for so short a time.

“Y'alright?” Steve rasped, voice dry because the doofus slept with his mouth open, and Sam nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, pulling the drawer out of the coffee table to gather his takeout menus. “Still figuring out how I feel about all of it, you know? But I figure it's time we ate.”

Steve sat forward and rubbed his hand over his face, blinking owlishly in the late afternoon sun.

“Time is it?” he muttered, glancing around for a clock, and Sam checked his watch.

“Six,” he said, and Steve pulled a face.

“That was some nap,” he said, and Sam shrugged, taking a nice long drink of his coffee.

“You feel better?”

Steve grinned shyly, eyes down.

“Yeah, I guess,” he said. “You know, your couch is great.”

“Doesn't matter – you'll be taking the bed.”

Steve made a scoffing noise but didn't say anything else about it, and they settled on the Gourmet Burger place again because, if it ain't broke.

“I need onion rings,” Sam said which, yeah, also. 

“Sounds good,” Steve said, reaching back to his hip for some reason before Sam actually saw him freeze.

Sam saw it and tried not to tense up – Steve was still looking at the menus so he hadn't heard anything that had stopped him, couldn't have seen anything that had stopped him.

“Okay?” Sam asked, and Steve looked stricken when he turned his head to look at Sam.

“I don't...” he said, and then he shook his head. “Sam, I don't even know where my wallet _is_ right now.”

Sam did his best to look at Steve as though Steve were an idiot.

“You're an idiot,” he said. “I'm not making you pay for your first proper meal out of hospital, not when you're staying in my house, not even if you were trying to take me out to dinner.”

Steve's eyebrows did something strange but he continued to stare at Sam. 

“Call it a celebration,” Sam told him. “Congratulations, you're alive, have a burger.”

Steve's expression turned soft, if pained, and he dropped Sam's gaze soon enough.

“Okay,” he said. “But not....just....I don't need much.”

“Bullshit you don't need much,” Sam said, grabbing the menu off the table in front of Steve, standing to fetch the phone. “Doctor's orders says you need about twice as much as me, and that's before the whole Serum thing.”

“Sam-”

“You let me help you before. You really think burger-and-fries compares to that shit?”

Steve had the good grace to look abashed. And extremely uncomfortable. And....yeah, okay, Sam was really going to have to watch that anger thing.

“I'm getting onion rings, are you getting onion rings?” Sam asked, by way of a peace offering, and Steve smiled tiredly.

“Sure,” he said. “If that's okay. Thanks.”

***

Steve still tried to take the couch. The discussion had lasted for such a short length of time that Steve couldn't even call it a discussion. One mention of how nice Sam's couch was, how it wasn't too hard and wasn't too soft, and Sam had called him Goldilocks and told him waffles were off the menu if he refused to take the bed.

And then he'd said, “least I can do, Cap, come on. This is my hospitality we're talking about,” and Steve knew it shouldn't have worked at making him feel guilty, but that didn't actually stop him feeling guilty. 

And it didn't even matter to Steve that it was barely nine in the evening, or that he’d spent a good portion of the day asleep. He'd eaten his fill and already had to sleep to manage that, and now he’d had enough being awake to exhaust him. 

Sam went after him on the stairs, Natasha’s mysterious duffel in hand, just in case Steve was unsteady on his feet. 

He went to the bathroom first, taking just a little longer, the remembered pain from the hospital fueling his reluctance. But the pain he was worried about didn't come. He found it more difficult, in fact, to redress afterward, with only one hand properly cooperating, and decided not to struggle with the toothpaste, using his new toothbrush to brush with water instead. Morning would bring improvement - he’d brush then. 

“Y'okay?” Sam's voice asked through the wooden door, and Steve tried his best to dry his hands. 

“Yeah,” he said. “I can use the head without it feeling like somebody kicked me in the goobers so I'm obviously improving.”

Sam's laughter filtered through, louder as Steve opened the door.

“Wanna take a look at Nat’s hand-picked pajamas?” Sam said as Steve hobbled back into the bedroom.

Steve laughed quietly but didn’t say much, turning his head away. Sam didn’t push him on it and Steve was glad for it - his thoughts were still wandering fairly regularly to the apartment he’d called home for a year and a half, and he knew Sam would never have blamed him for feeling that way. But he couldn't go back there now.

“Come on, I checked - they’re gray. No patterns, no little shields or anything. Just gray.”

Steve cocked his head with a smile.

“You sure you don't want me to take the couch?” he said.

“Get on the bed before I knock you on your ass,” Sam answered, a smirk playing about his lips, and Steve watched it for a moment or two before he did as he was asked. 

“Sure you can get a punch in before I take you down?”

“With one of your arms in a sling, hell yeah - at least half a one. Prob’ly.”

Steve laughed and looked down again, something tugging behind his ribs. He wasn't really sure if it was the injuries or not, but he knew he hadn't enjoyed a conversation like this for a very long time.

“Hey, this is a nice bed,” he said, because looking down had made him look at the bed and he'd suddenly noticed.

When he looked up, Sam was grinning.

“I don't sleep on marshmallows,” he said. “You need help?”

Steve thought about it for a second, fighting down the initial, automatic, _no, I'm good_ in favor of an answer that he'd actually thought about, the way Sam deserved.

“I...” he said, pride and honesty warring the way they always had, “I could use a hand with this.” 

Sam's barely-contained smirk when Steve lifted his sling-arm had Steve well aware of the mistake he'd made before Sam even opened his mouth. 

“Looks like you could use an _arm,_ ” Sam said, and Steve just groaned at him.

“Come on, you're gonna put me back in the hospital at this rate,” Steve said.

Sam walked until he stood in front of Steve and then bent to set about unclasping the sling. Steve bent his head when Sam went for the strap, and winced when he had to lift his arm to help.

“Doing okay?” Sam asked, and Steve screwed his eyes shut. 

“Just...a little stiffer than I...it hurts.”

“Surprise,” Sam said dryly, gesturing at the hoodie a moment later. “You sleepin’ in that thing?”

“I…was gonna?” Steve answered, unsure, and Sam held up both hands, the sling still in one of them, while Steve cradled his bad arm in his better one. 

“Just checking,” he said. “Let me know if you want anything in the laundry. I mean, I'm not gonna press 'em but you can probably still wear 'em when we go running. You...” he paused. “You _are_ going running tomorrow, right?”

Steve pursed his lips. “Funny man,” he said, and Sam smirked.

“Why don’t you go to sleep,” he said. “And I'll try not to think about another guy sleeping in my bed in some other woman’s pajamas.”

“Sam.”

“Getting all up in there with all my pillows.”

“Sam!”

Sam just raised one eyebrow at him.

“Goodnight, Cap.”

Sam was almost out of the door when Steve felt the words bubble up, as inadequate as they seemed to be.

“Thanks, Sam.”

“Any time,” Sam answered, turning back for a moment with a smirk. “Now go to sleep, you sound like a bad movie.”

Steve rolled his eyes but stood up as Sam closed the door behind him. “Wake up call for five-thirty, right?” he said, and Steve used his better hand to start easing the waistband of his pants down.

“Sure,” he said. “I'll go slow so you can keep up.”

He heard Sam laugh, and smiled a little to himself as he managed to get the pants far enough that they fell the rest of the way and pooled around his ankles. He kicked them away and did the same for his underwear, and then he sat down on the bed and stretched out to reach them and bundle them up.

Maneuvering himself into the pajama pants was easier than he’d expected, mainly because they were loose and soft. He could stick one foot in and just tug the waistband with his good arm until it got to around waist-level. Still though, it hurt, and he winced, and really hoped Sam wasn't listening outside the door to check on him, because the sound he'd made didn't exactly scream _I'm fine_. But he managed it eventually, deciding to deal with the bundle of worn laundry when he was back to being able to use both hands.

The world was still so bright outside that he hadn't needed the light on and so didn't need to turn it off now – something he considered a blessing – as he tugged the covers back with his better arm and, awkwardly, managed to lie down.

Almost instantly, he felt as though a switch had been flipped anyway – his eyes felt sore, the eyelids heavy, and it was only the difficulty he suddenly had in breathing that gave him enough motivation to turn until his stomach wasn't hurting quite as much.

The sheets were cool and soft and smelled like cotton and soap, and the bed was just like the couch had been – perfect. He was asleep by the time Sam came past again, and didn't stir when Sam opened the door half an inch to check on him.

He slept right through, and didn't dream.

***

After breakfast the following morning, the first thing Steve did was set the tablet from the duffel on the dining table and connect to Sam’s wi-fi. Actually, he set the tablet on a placemat on the table, because somehow, after all of this, it’s the finish on Sam’s table that he was concerned about.

Sam was under no illusions about what he was looking at, and he stayed for some of it, but this was decades of information, alongside decades of what quickly revealed itself to be abuse. Doctored hierarchies, hidden agendas, and years of subversion and clandestine terror. From the end of WW2 and the beginning of Operation Paperclip, every single mission the SSR ran, every single operation they managed, every piece of information and every terrifying piece of technology gathered and stored for research, every single thing that SHIELD had access to as an intelligence agency - all of it - was compromised.

Technology for defense - with secret weapons development. Chemical and biological developments for medical advancements - with secret weapons development. Everything from Chitauri weapons to search-engine algorithms - Hydra’s long-term plans had included contingencies.

There were videos of human testing - Sam didn’t watch, and Steve didn’t watch much. There were reams and reams of notes that ranged from mission briefings and emails to interrogations. It was difficult to comprehend the scope of _literally everything on file at SHIELD now being on the worldwide web_ , but there it was.

Video from the cafeteria and the projected menus for the next six months according to budget. How much was spent on toilet paper in the main facility in a year. The cost of welding materials for one of three helicarriers. Photos of new recruits training in the mud, individual assessments of threat levels per Avenger, a file for everyone who ever worked at SHIELD, and Sam had to turn his head away when Steve murmurs, “Peg,” dejectedly.

It went on and on, Steve searching randomly as he thought of things. Agents he knew who were in the field, either killed by Hydra plants or gone to ground following exposure. World Security Council recordings. Frantic 911 calls on the day of the Battle of New York.

He found notes from his therapist - they were coded of course, but Steve knew his own call-signs, recognized the subject matter, could pick out his own therapist. He’d seen the man three times before deciding against further visits, feeling uncomfortable and far worse than before he’d started. The lists of Hydra undercover agents on the tablet screen showed him why.

He found copies of the emails he sent when he was first shown email, each addressed formally as though it were handwritten. Autocorrect mistakes from his issued smartphone and GPS tracking routes for every day he carried it with him.

Weapons blueprints.

Agent information.

He even found recordings of his apartments - almost total silence aside from footsteps and, once or twice, not long after he’d been defrosted, near-silent sobs. A single occasion of Steve accidentally calling out to Bucky Barnes to tell him dinner was ready and the panic attack that followed.

It was awful to listen to, all of it. Not just the stuff that was personal to Steve, not just the conversations recorded of unsuspecting people. 

The torture was worse. Deliberate and unflinching, SHIELD’s interrogation techniques had always been harsh, bordering on something much darker, but Hydra? There were so many videos of torture that Steve stopped trying to figure out where in the mass of information they even were.

And then there was the Winter Soldier.

It surprised Sam, it really did. He expected Steve to be the type of man to force himself to sit through every video to better understand his friend, to learn about what happened so that he could better help him when they found him but, instead, Sam was making lunch when there was a noise like tearing metal, like dragging a filing cabinet across a gravel floor, so loud that it made him jump, shut off in the same instant.

When he turned around to find out what it was, Steve was _white_ , and shaking, and Sam realized it was human screaming.

He didn’t need to ask whose.

Sam took the tablet from him.

“It’s too soon,” he said softly. “You don’t have to do this now.”

Steve just shook his head against Sam’s shoulder.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he whispered, and then he reared back from Sam and stood, unsteady, hand coming up to his mouth. “ ‘M gonna-”

Sam let him go.

It was either supreme stupidity or morbid curiosity that made Sam actually look at the list of targets that had been released with the black box data from the Insight carriers, after said information had been rerouted through the open-door Natasha had basically left.

Sam didn’t know how she’d managed to make sure residual data all got released - an open-ended programming loop or something of that ilk - but he was on it, of course he was. Natasha Romanoff was on it - no fucking kidding. Stark and Potts were on it, Margaret Elizabeth Carter was on it. But present was every single other person Sam could think to check including, horrifyingly, Riley’s mother.

At least, he guessed, this meant that nobody working - or seeking therapy - at the VA were Hydra but still.

Riley’s mother.

Sam Wilson. Nicholas Fury. Natasha Romanoff. Tony Stark. Angela Lee. Casey Paterson, Toby Giles, Maria Hill, everybody - every person Sam knew, Sam could think of, Sam remembered. Shawn Staedler from next door who worked as a defense lawyer. Mr Grouseman from his High School who’d been a social activist. His CO. His wingmen. His exes, movie stars, politicians, his officers, his PJ buddies. 

He supposed that meant that those were all good people but he couldn’t shake the terror of knowing how close they’d come. Ordinary people in their thousands had been within seconds of death - children without mothers, ready to be indoctrinated. Scientists without family, to be given no reason to live. And millions of innocents slaughtered within minutes, so quickly there’d be no chance of news reaching anyone else in time.

The world had almost ended and Sam was-

His ears started to ring. His shoulders hunched and he closed his eyes, aware of the little white specks at the edge of his vision. 

The world had almost ended and Sam had helped save it.

He scrubbed his hand over his face, looked outside at the world going on with its daily life, traffic a little heavier with the routes near the demolished SHIELD HQ closed, and…

Paused.

He hit control and ‘F’ and waited for the box to pop up, and then he stared at the caret where it waited in the first box.

A box for NAME popped up above D.O.B, these two above BIRTHPLACE

‘S’

Backspace.,

‘S t e-’

Backspace. 

He sighed through his nose, staring at the blinking caret.

_Blink._

_Blink._

_Blink._

_Blink._

S t e v e n R o g e r s

Enter.

In the middle of the screen, a small, red-outlined box appeared.

Search  
Steven Rogers  
1392  
Results Found

He went back, put a G between Steven and Rogers.

Search  
Steven G Rogers  
245  
Results Found

He tried again.

Search  
Steven Grant Rogers  
124  
Results Found

Again.

Search  
Steven Grant Rogers, Brooklyn  
3  
Results Found

Again.

Search  
Steven Grant Rogers, 07/04/18, Brooklyn  
0  
Results Found

And that….okay, that…

What?

Search  
Steven Grant Rogers, 07/04/1918, Brooklyn  
0  
Results Found

Search  
Steven Grant Rogers, 1918, Brooklyn  
0  
Results Found

Search  
Steven Grant Rogers, July 04, Brooklyn  
0  
Results Found

Search  
Steven Grant Rogers, July 04 1918, New York  
0  
Results Found

Nothing.

Time and time and time again, after every permutation Sam could think of, after every attempt, there was no result listed in Insight’s archives.

He even tried Steve’s rank, tried abbreviations, went all the way and typed Captain America to no avail. 

And then it hit Sam all at once, made perfect sense in the worst way possible. He searched again.

Search  
James Buchanan Barnes, 03/10/17, Brooklyn  
1  
Results Found

They’d had no further use for the Winter Soldier.

Of _course_ they’d wanted Steve alive.

~

The email came through at around twenty-one hundred, while Steve was asleep in the armchair nearest the corner of the room, and while Sam was typing up paperwork. It came through his VA mail too, so no guesses who’d sent it, even if it did look like he’d sent it to himself. 

___________________________________  
___________________________________  
From: Wilson, Samuel  
Sent: 01:44:33  
To: Wilson, Samuel  
Subject:

Charlie says hi.

Confidentiality Note: This e-mail is intended only for the person to whom it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential, or otherwise protected from disclosure. Dissemination, distribution, or copying of this e-mail or the information herein by anyone other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify by reply e-mail and destroy the original message and all copies.  
___________________________________  
___________________________________

‘Charlie says hi’ was a link, and Sam was not a fool. If the Black Widow had sent him something it was because it was important, and he made sure his speakers were off before he clicked it.

It brought up a new window, a huge window, black. It filled the screen almost entirely, wasn’t a browser, and it wasn’t VLC, but it was similar - it showed as a blank, white, dog-eared page on his taskbar, had no title in the title bar, a tiny hollow rectangle as the application icon, and a thin, white line at the bottom of the very black screen. It was only when he held his cursor near the line that “0:14:21” faded in and out so quickly that Sam almost didn’t see it. He did it again and “0:16:44” appeared and disappeared. 

For a couple of minutes, he watched the video and…saw nothing. It was all black, and continued to be that way for a good five minutes. He moved a little further on, to the ten minute mark. Still black. And then he realized that he’d received an email just now, at twenty-one hundred, that had apparently been sent either a few hours ahead, or almost a day ago. Just because there was nothing to lose from trying, he moved the cursor along the line until the numbers hovered up on the receipt time, “01:44:33,” and clicked on the little white bar.

Instantly, the screen was full of color. Shot from high overhead, metal, silver and black and water through glass. And in the bottom left hand corner, in blocky white letters, were not-quite-words that made all too much sense.

‘IN-01 SEC07\02\157’

Helicarrier IN-01 had been designated Charlie by the time they were through, simply because it had been the third one they’d reached. Even if Sam hadn’t known that originally, he would have remembered it afterward. That kind of designation written in letters the size of a house heading towards you at great speed was not something he was liable to forget.

And, as he watched, a figure in red, white and blue slowed out of a run on the walkway in the middle of the shot. To Sam’s surprise, it took him another few seconds to notice the _other_ person, the Winter Soldier, standing by the mainframe, between Steve and the blade he was going to have to replace. Sam felt the hair rise on the back of his neck as the angle of the security camera changed.

‘IN-01 SEC07\12\045’

And now he could see Steve over the Winter Soldier’s shoulder - a camera actually on the mainframe - and Steve was speaking. He couldn’t tell if the Winter Soldier was responding but Steve said something, and then something else, something that looked painful. And then his expression changed completely and Sam hit his spacebar, pausing the video on the shot of Steve over the Winter Soldier’s shoulder, his head down, his eyes dark, his jaw clenched.

Sam’s headphones were around somewhere - he’d only had them earlier in the day when he’d been looking up a recipe he was thinking of revisiting - so they had to be—

“Ah,” he said, spotting them in a tangle of loops on the floor near his foot. 

He managed to tug them closer on the hardwood with the tips of his fingers, without dislodging himself from his seat or dropping his laptop, and then he managed to get his fingernails under a wire and scrape them up the chair leg until he could fumble them into his lap. He could have gotten up but he was too tired for that, and he untangled them, plugged them in, and pulled the timer back to 1:44:33.

There was noise. Metal and whirring and the general sound of an Insight helicarrier functioning, alongside the _clonk clonk clonk_ of Steve’s slowing footsteps. 

And then the angle changed to camera 045.

“ _People are gonna die, Buck. I can’t let that happen._ ”

Silence followed, a silence that stretched on and on. It was only maybe eight seconds, but it felt like minutes, like years. Sam kept expecting the Winter Soldier to say something.

“ _Please don’t make me do this._ ”

And something changed, the Winter Soldier, he lowered his head just a little. And Sam realized that it was the same movement Steve made a few seconds later. That change in his expression - that same head down, dark-eyed look that Sam had never seen on Steve in person must have been a response. Without speaking, the Winter Soldier must have answered, and Steve’s whole stance changed - he didn’t take a step, but his shoulders tensed, his jaw, his arms, his whole body.

And then, Sam saw, then he _moved_.

~

He watched it five times in a row. 

From Steve’s footsteps, through “ _please don’t make me do this,_ ” and “ _drop it, drop it!”_ Past “ _do it now!_ ” Past “ _James Buchanan Barnes_.”

Through punch after punch, kick after kick, bullets flying, a stab wound, and Steve, God, Barnes’ _arm._

Five times of Steve saying “ _I’m not gonna fight you_ ,” and the sick, swooping sense of terror as Steve’s shield dropped out of the floor every time.

Five times of “ _you’re my friend_ ” and the heart-stopping desperation of seeing punch after punch after punch and not being able to do a thing about it. The fourth time through, he had to take five minutes to watch Steve sleeping just to convince his brain Steve was still alive.

He kept seeing things he hadn’t noticed - the way Barnes’ fingers moved, the particular roll of a shoulder - Sam hadn’t even realized that the first bullet scraped Steve’s ribs until the third watch, didn’t see the plates move when Steve grappled with Barnes until the fourth. But every time, every time, it was like hearing it for the first time.

“ _Then finish it,_ ” Steve’s voice, thick with smoke and pain and grief, one eye swollen shut, the other glittering. “ _’Cause I’m with you to…the end of the line._ ”

And then he fell. Metal and glass and the Winter Soldier hanging on by one arm as the small figure of Captain America fell so far into the waters of the Potomac and disappeared. 

Five times, Sam watched less than five seconds pass before the Winter Soldier, before Barnes, let go of the beam he held, and followed Steve Rogers down.

And then Sam deleted the email, closed his laptop, stood up very calmly and went to be somewhere else that was nowhere near Steve Rogers, sleeping or not.

***

It boiled in him all day.

_Then finish it._

Sam couldn’t get the image out from behind his eyelids, couldn’t stop hearing the desperate, broken voice in his head, the echo of Barnes screaming. 

_Then finish it._

End Of The Line only meant one thing as far as Sam was concerned - ‘Til Death Do Us Part, and the thing about that was, it could have meant to have and to hold, or it could have meant a suicide pact but, from the look of that security footage, it apparently meant both. 

Steve didn’t get up the whole day, system still out of whack from everything it had been through, and Sam was glad for it, actually. He knew where Steve was coming from, what kind of pain he must have felt, but it pissed Sam off. After everything, after what the whole world was going through, after the predestination-bullshit of them _both_ winding up in the same place after seventy years on ice, Steve figured his best option was to check out?

Sam shook himself a little.

He _knew_ that wasn’t the case, not from a guy like this, come on. Death wasn’t the driving force behind his actions, but empathy? Desperation? Love, yeah, love too. ‘If I can’t save you then take me with you’ and _that_ , oh, that Sam understood very well. 

And stubbornness too - Steve had believed right until the last moment that he could save James Barnes, and then he’d been _right_. Sam ordered takeout for dinner, no way was he spending forever making something. In a mood like this, he’d probably burn himself. 

~

It wound up being the middle of the night when Sam heard something that made him open his eyes.

Pulled backwards out of whatever dream he'd been having, the high, ringing noise registered before his brain was awake enough to tell him there was someone moving behind him – moving slowly and quietly enough that they clearly hadn't intended to wake him.

It was the sound of a glass catching on something, and there were two possibilities for that noise.

Either Steve was up and about the way Sam was aware of him doing from time to time, or there was somebody else in the kitchen. It could be either, but checking to see if it was the first would kill him if it were the second. 

He had a firearm to hand, safety on, under the couch, and he pulled it free to get a proper grip on it, shifting himself on the couch until he could see the kitchen reflected in the glass fitted into one of the picture frames.

There was definitely someone moving around and they hadn’t turned the light on. And, while the chances of a roving supervillain - or the Winter Soldier - getting a glass of water from the sink before going on a killing spree were low, he wasn’t about to take any chances.

Except that, when he took the safety off, Steve dropped the glass.

_“Shit!_

He whirled to face Sam, hands up by his head instantly, and then his silhouette seemed to deflate a little.

“Oh,” he said, and Sam flicked the safety back on as Steve lowered his hands, switching the nearest lamp on next.

‘Oh?’ Really?

“Couldn’t sleep?” Sam said instead, understatement of the year.

Steve looked down at the broken glass by his feet and bent down to retrieve it.

“I kept waking up,” he said. “I can’t catch more than five minutes at a time.”

Sam narrowed his eyes but stowed his piece, and extricated himself from his blanket a moment later, standing to retrieve their shoes from by the door.

“Stand still,” Sam told him, “I’m not pickin’ glass outta your toes.”

Steve didn’t even crack a smile, but then Sam didn’t feel much like smiling either. His heart was still going a little too fast, the adrenaline spike having clenched all of his muscles, and it was kind of a low-level irritation now that it wasn’t the fight half of his fight or flight response.

He shoved his own feet into his shoes, and then walked over to Steve, setting Steve’s shoes down by his feet. He let Steve lean on him to get them on, too, and then they started picking up pieces of glass together.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said, sounding pretty pissed at himself, and Sam shrugged.

“ ‘S Just a glass, man,” he said. “I got more.”

Steve didn’t say anything at all in response to that, and they worked in relative silence until they were through with the dustpan, tipping the last of the glittery little shards into the trash can before setting it aside.

“So you gonna tell me about the nightmares or…?”

Steve shrugged, not looking at him.

“Same old,” he answered, and Sam nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, leaning against the counter top. “I used to get ‘em. Get ‘em less now, but they still come.”

Steve just nodded, and Sam wasn’t really sure if either of them should go back to bed just yet.

“You want a drink?” he asked, and Steve huffed a bitter laugh.

“Want me to smash another glass?”

Okay, so Steve was being defensive. It wasn’t like Sam hadn’t dealt with that before, wasn’t like Sam didn’t understand.

“I got plastic ones,” he said. “Bought 'em when I had a habit of smashing glasses myself. You want water or something warm?”

Steve closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened them again and shook his head, glancing around Sam’s kitchen as though he weren't sure how real it really was.

“Uh,” he said eventually, “whatever's easiest but...yeah, warm, please.”

Sam nodded, pointing over to the table.

“Take a seat,” he said, and Steve did as he was told, shuffling over to the dining table to drop down into one of the chairs.

Sam retrieved a plastic jug from the cupboard over his head and started measuring out enough milk for both of them and, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Steve fold his arms on the tabletop and set his head down on them.

They still kept mainly quiet between them, partially because of how late (or, technically, early) it was, and partially because the world was at its quietest, and neither of them were particularly calm. 

Sam had learned, from years of experience, how not to let small sounds startle him, and he knew the house well enough that the little noises never seemed to bother him any more. Cooling pipes, cooling wood, the air conditioning – Sam had learned to live alongside them, to ignore them.

But for someone new, with enhanced senses and an all-too-rational paranoia, any new place was difficult to get used to.

When the microwave beeped to let him know the milk was done, Sam removed it and poured in a fair amount of instant hot chocolate. Hot chocolate was good for shock – warm, full of sugar, comforting by nature.

He decanted half each into two plastic mugs, brightly patterned because they'd been a gift from his sister and her kids, and took them over to the table, sitting down opposite Steve.

Steve raised his head when Sam sat down, rubbing his hand over his eyes and then through his hair. He wasn't making eye-contact, but Sam figured he wouldn't. He'd had a shock, an apparent disappointment if his realization that Sam was Sam and not the Winter Soldier was anything to go by, and then he probably felt he'd made himself look a fool.

Sam usually felt the same when he dropped someone else's glassware but, as was usually the way, it meant a lot more to the person doing the breaking than the person whose glassware it was.

“It's just a glass,” he said again, and Steve laughed softly, awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck.

“I'm sorry,” he said anyway, and Sam nodded.

Steve took a long draught of his hot chocolate, folding his long fingers around the mug when he set it back down. He'd taken to doing that, and Sam hadn't missed it. Maybe it was because Steve had grown up constantly cold, maybe it was psychological, but Steve always had a certain temperament when he did it.

“So you thought I was him, huh?” Sam asked, and Steve curled up on himself, just a little more.

“I didn't come down because I thought he'd be here,” he said, and then his eyes squeezed shut that little bit tighter. “But I thought for sure when I heard the gun.”

Sam felt the heat at the base of his neck, in the center of his chest, that signaled irritation, but that wasn't fair. That wasn't rational. As Steve said, he hadn't been _looking_ for the Winter Soldier, he'd just reacted as though it could have been. After all, Sam didn't usually go around pulling guns on him, and the Winter Soldier _really did_.

“You know, if you want to talk about it,” Sam said, “I'm here for you as a friend. And if you want help with it, honest-to-God actual professional help, I kind of know somebody. A lot of somebodies. And I know you maybe don't want to hear it-”

“It's not that I don't want to hear it, Sam, it's that I'm doing just fine by myself.”

That made the irritation flare a little brighter, but he held it together. 

“Except you jump at every sound and you haven't slept a full night since you got out of the hospital,” he answered, not unkindly. “There's no shame askin' for help, _if_ you want it.”

Steve didn't reply.

“I'm not trying to push you, Steve, I'm trying to help you get better. You've been through a lot – a hell of a lot – and you don't gotta be afraid of-”

“I’m not a coward,” Steve said, and Sam felt his eyebrows shoot up, mouth opening slowly in surprise.

That, that was...

It was irrational, it was stupid, but the first thing that Sam remembered was flashes of every therapy session he'd ever been to, every one he'd ever taken, all the people like him who'd needed somebody and tried to get better and what the _hell?_

“Ex _cuse_ me?” he said. 

Steve must have heard the change in Sam's voice, heard the change of tone – from calm and persuasive to hard, to defensive, and he frowned.

“I said-” Steve began, but Sam cut him off.

“Oh I _heard_ what you said,” he answered, and part of him wondered if he ought to stop. “You tryin’ to insult me right now, or is that just luck?”

Steve's frown deepened, confusion evident, but Sam wasn't in any mood for it, apparently, and he shook his head. The irritation was fast graduating to anger, and he knew he ought to get a handle on it pretty soon.

“What?” Steve said, and Sam sat up straighter, leaning back in his chair. “What are you talking about?”

“You tell me, man,” Sam answered, gesturing with one hand, as offhandedly as he could manage with his blood up the way it was. “You tell me, what does being afraid have to do with being a coward?”

Steve was sliding from apologetic into annoyed, Sam could see it on his face, and that only made things worse – part of Sam knew to walk away from this, and the other part wanted to see it through.

“That isn’t what I meant, Sam, and you know it,” Steve said.

“Do I?” Sam countered. “Or am I just hearing the same thing from you that I hear every time? One rule for the Super-Soldier, something else for all us regular folks?”

Steve sat up a little straighter, too.

“I’m not talking about _you_ -” he said, and Sam wasn't about to have this.

“Why not?” Sam said, thinking of every single shivering person who'd ever sat silently through one of his talks, every marine who'd cried during one on one, every person who'd ever texted in the middle of the night to ask what year it was, why the hell should they be any different? “What’s the difference when you’re talking about you? What makes you so different, huh? If you’re a coward because you’re afraid, why isn't everyone else? Why aren’t I one because I’m afraid?”

“It’s different-”

And no, no it wasn't, and that was what Steve didn't get, that was what Steve kept on harping on about – everyone was different, every single person, and Steve had asked for Sam's help before, why the hell was he refusing it now?

“How?” Sam asked. “How, because you’re stronger than me? Because you’re faster than me?”

“Because I have a job to do, and I can't afford to take downtime when-”

“Do you know what wounded in action is?” Sam asked. “Do you seriously not understand that you don't have to scar to need to heal? I know - I know - how hard it is to admit you got a problem, to say to yourself there's something that hurts, but you're telling me it's different because you're Captain America?”

Steve's jaw locked, a muscle in his cheek jumped, and his eyes narrowed just enough that Sam knew this was about to be a full-blown fight.

“I don't want help,” he said, and then he looked away, “nobody can help anyway.”

“Oh, _there_ it is, Lord have mercy, save me from the nobody-gets-me attitude,” Sam said, getting to his feet to move away before he said something stupid, and Steve stared, his mouth falling open this time. “You're afraid you've got nothing left to lose, and you already act like it’s true. You always gotta play the goddamned martyr-”

“If I have to make that choice to make sure somebody else-”

Sam spun to face him, remembering every little thing, Steve stepping out first, Steve taking bullets to his abdomen, Steve lying lifeless on a riverbank, Steve staring at the Winter Soldier's uncovered face, Steve all but catatonic in the back of the Hydra truck, Steve and his thousand yard stare.

“You wade into a fight with that attitude or is it just for Barnes’ benefit-”

“Sam-”

“Think I haven’t been there? I’ve been where you are, I know what it’s like to lose somebody. You know _damn_ well I know. And I know how it feels to _fight_ like you lost ‘em, too. You think I don’t know what it is to look at someone and have to make a choice, to look at a situation and figure your best chances are that it’ll be fast when it comes, and that you want it to come soon?”

Steve faltered, Sam saw him. “Sometimes there isn’t a choice-” he said eventually, and Sam took three steps towards him.

“Yeah but sometimes there is, and that’s what you don’t seem to get. You want to talk to me about cowardice? How's taking a bullet even if you could’a stepped out of the way, just for a faster way out?”

Sam didn't even realize until he said it, but that hit home hard. That earned him a full shift of Steve’s body, a rise of color in his cheeks.

“What if that’s the only choice?” he retorted anyway, voice rough, unsteady – because if anybody could keep on fighting even though it was killing him, it was Steve.

“You’re not listening to me, you’re still hung up on this great and noble Captain America idea and you think it’s gotta be the only way, you think you’ve only got one choice to make because it’s been the only way before.”

“It will be again,” Steve said, chin out, shoulders back, head high.

This kind of thing was killing Sam, watching Steve Rogers pretend it didn't hurt when it was eating him alive.

“Yeah, maybe!” Sam nodded because, yeah, probably – how many people did they know who'd gone out like that? “But don’t you think you should maybe try and get out alive before you give up?”

Steve looked disgusted.

“It’s not giving up, you know how this works.”

“What, like you crashed into the ice because you didn't have a choice?” Sam asked, and Steve stood up at the table now, too.

“I _didn’t_ have a choice! You think I would have done it if I had a choice? If I knew I’d _live_?”

Sam pointed. 

“That, _right there,_ ” he said. “You think I don't hear it and you think I don't understand it but I do. I know you didn’t have a choice - anyone who went to school in this country knows you didn’t have a choice - you did the tough thing because it was the right thing, and you saved a whole lotta lives doin’ it. But I heard you. If you knew you’d live, you wouldn’t have done it, isn’t that what you just said to me?”

Two seconds of silence as Steve panicked.

“It’s not that simple!” Steve answered, and his voice was rising now.

“But it’s part of it, that’s what you won’t admit to. You didn’t have a choice, and you put yourself in harm’s way to keep everyone else out. That’s noble. But you don’t expect to make it out alive, and somehow that’s all right by you?”

“So you’re tellin’ me I’m tryin’a die?” Steve said, and this time his gaze didn't waver at all.

“I’m saying you ain’t trying _not_ to die,” Sam answered. “Now, I don’t know who Bucky Barnes was, I don’t know what your life was like. I don’t know just how much you really lost, I can’t _ever_ , man. But what I do know is that you keep _telling_ me you don’t think it’s giving up, you keep _saying_ the choice you make is the only choice, but _you_ tell _me_ who dropped his shield into the Potomac in the middle of a fight, Steve. Why don’t you do that, huh, tell me whose goddamn suicide pact came back to beat the shit out of him-”

Steve looked decisive, like he was about to explain some master plan.

“Bucky doesn’t-”

“ _Bucky_ ,” Sam said, leaning forward to make his point, “ _isn’t in there right now._ I gotta be honest, man; right now it pisses me off to think that he might be some day, that he might come back to you and remember and be sorry, but right now he doesn’t know _what_ he is, and I know what you were doing, I know what you did, you figured you’d either get him back or you’d both die trying, and that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad either way.”

Steve really was speechless then. His mouth worked for a moment or two, and then he looked down, away. Sam walked right up to him, ducked his head to try and make sure Steve could see his eyes.

“You think your life is only worth what _you_ make of it, and that makes you reckless. That makes you dangerous. You’ll throw yourself out in front for anything, you’ll stick your neck out-”

“Only when I have to!” Steve said.

“Oho, sure, ‘cause you got nothing to prove,” Sam said, bitter, angry, leaning back to exaggerate it all, and Steve made an odd noise, a half-strangled explanation. “You think the world is a scary place now, you think there are people who need help, you think there’s people lonely, and scared, and weak? You just wait. Boy, you just wait. You think you’re a coward ‘cause you’re scared - you’n I _both_ know bein’ _scared_ ain’t what makes a coward.”

Sam moved away, didn't want to be here any more, didn't want to be in the same room as Steve, didn't want to be in the same place, sharing the same air, and why the hell not? He was still wearing his shoes after all – he wanted fresh air and somewhere to stretch his legs.

So he went straight toward the front door, and Steve actually reached out to him. Sam almost regretted it, because he could see the sudden shift in Steve's stance, the sudden change in his expression. Steve was used to seeing things through, not winning by default.

“Sam-” he said, and he sounded worried but Sam dodged his hand.

“No, you know what?” he said, pulling a jacket off the coat hooks, grabbing his keys as he wrenched the front door open. “You fight hand to hand for hours, for days, it’s your job. But you put that shield down for _him._ ” 

Steve’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment.

“Wh…” he said. “How did-”

“Natasha sent it to me,” Sam answered. “The CCTV from the carrier, you and him. You were willing to die for him, Steve - so why don’t you think about… “ and he had to stop. Had to stop and breathe and swallow hard and take another breath. “Why don’t you start thinkin’ about finding something to live for?”

And then he stepped out into the dark and slammed the door behind him.

Sam went everywhere. Anywhere. He didn’t go to the Mall because the whole place was a mess, but he walked around the little patch of grass just down from where he lived that counted as a park on Google Maps, not that he’d ever be using Google Maps again. He walked up and down the streets and took a look at everybody’s front doors - some people had glass, some people didn’t. He could hear breaking glass in his head and took to trying to figure out how many plants he could name instead. 

Little purple flowers, big white ones on stalks. 

Sam was a therapist, sure, but he wasn’t Steve’s therapist. He was supposed to be Steve’s friend. 

He counted how many doors were blue and tried not to think of Riley, and he went back to the little park and tried not to feel like he should be down on the Mall helping people. 

They didn’t know yet if he’d gotten out with his identity still concealed, didn’t know if there were authorities after him. He probably, given that Fury’d told them in the bunker how DC police had tried to kill him, shouldn’t even have been out on the street, but it took maybe four hours of walking around in the lessening dark before he went back to the park and sat there on a bench. He had his wallet but not his phone, and he could have gone for breakfast but he didn’t feel like eating. He didn’t feel like anything actually, except maybe calling his mom. Which he couldn’t do without his phone. 

He took out his wallet and looked at his driver’s license (not that he’d need a driver’s license for a car without a steering column) and his loyalty card from that café down by the VA. His debit card, his gym membership. 

Hell of a life he was about to leave behind. 

He dropped his hands into his lap and looked at the little statue in the middle of the circle in the path. The dawn was coming up cold blue, without the sunrise to warm it yet. It would eventually, but Sam felt caught in limbo, stuck halfway between a world or two, one reality and the next. Walk or fly, stand or fall. 

Providing he and Steve didn’t face any actual consequences of course, ha freaking ha. If no authorities came for him and Steve - let alone Romanoff - then that would be a…

Huh.

Him and Steve. 

Sam leaned back on the bench and heaved a sigh, rolling his eyes at the clouds - what with all the debris in the air, the dust had been seeding clouds over DC for a good few days now, and it made everything dull and desaturated. 

Him and Steve.

“You already made up your mind, huh?” he muttered to himself. 

But it wouldn’t stand the way it was - they couldn’t do this the way things were. If every time Steve came anywhere near Barnes he just dropped everything and rolled onto his back to wait for the sweet release of getting his whole face beaten in, then nothing was going to work. So they needed to have a conversation that wasn’t just yelling.

And he’d yelled because he’d been mad and he’d been mad because he cared and, the thing was, he knew he shouldn’t yell but he also felt like he was fully justified, thanks. He’d known plenty of guys with Steve’s current attitude and it did not end well. Hell, he’d seen it in Steve the morning they met and, even though Steve had actually taken him up on his invitation, there hadn’t been time to set him up with a therapist, or in a group. Nice to meet you, nice VA you got here, we’re on the run can we stay with you, let’s take down SHIELD. It had been a hell of a ride, and _fast_.

Once the sun was up, he decided. He could stand to stay here while the slivers of pale sky turned purple through to pink, while the clouds turned from blue to steel. He’d stay out a while - and maybe it’d do Steve some good to sweat about it, to stew on what Sam had said - but he’d go once the sun was up.

***

Sam didn’t come back all night. Steve called his cellphone first, and it buzzed across the table by the couch. He considered going out to try and find him - he could _maybe_ figure it out from footsteps on grass or wind direction, knowing stuff like movement patterns, but it would be a guess at best and if Sam were to come back…

He could call Natasha, but everyone was going crazy about CCTV in the wake of the helicarriers, and he doubted Sam would be especially pleased about it. 

So he sat at the kitchen table and waited. 

It should have been easy - he’d done plenty of waiting in Europe. Instead, he lasted maybe ten minutes before he was tapping the fingers of one hand and chewing the nails of the other. What if Sam got in trouble? His face might have been blurry from the ground, blurry on the CCTV, but what if Hydra had better cameras? What if dumping SHIELD’s data had dumped Sam’s too?

What if the cops were out to get him - Sam had told him once about how easy it was for a black man to get stopped by police anyway but now, after a disaster like this, with Sam only in pajamas, and with any cop on the street potentially a Hydra plant (Steve wasn’t so naive as to think that they’d all stepped into the light; some had to be playing an even longer game) every second that Sam was gone was another second he might get hurt, or captured, or arrested even if the cops _weren’t_ Hydra. 

Besides which, Steve thought as guilt crawled up his throat, this was _Sam’s house._ Sam’s _home_ , that he and Nat had invaded, that he was using like a hotel, that he’d _forced Sam out of._

And Sam-

Sam wasn’t right, not about all of it. He didn’t want to die - dying was the _last_ thing he wanted now that Bucky was alive, how would being dead help Bucky now? Seeing Bucky alive at the bridge - it had felt worse than anything Steve could think of. Worse than anything he could remember - except waking alone in this century, and the memory of losing his mother. 

Bucky was _out there_ somewhere, and Steve couldn’t help him unless they could find him. Bucky had been through more than Steve could imagine, but he’d _known_. Steve _got through,_ he’d _seen_ it in Bucky’s eyes in the moments before he fell.

It seemed they were always falling. 

Steve sat down, and got up, and paced, and sat down.

The sun was going to be up soon, and so he made up his mind. He’d take a shower, clear his head. And then he’d work out where Sam went. 

~

The house was quiet when Sam came back.

He wondered if Steve had left, and felt a sharp spike of guilt in his stomach until he saw Steve’s shoes were still by the door, his jacket still on the hook. 

Then he figured maybe Steve had gone back to bed - depression could do that to you easy enough, and so could trying to heal from a bullet wound (more than one, his brain reminded him, and a stab wound, too). 

But, as he trudged up the stairs to check the spare room, he could hear the shower going instead. 

In for a penny, right?

~

Steve didn't know what exactly made him turn – what made him open his eyes under the running water and look back over his shoulder. Maybe it was a sound, or maybe it was instinct, but he didn't jump at seeing Sam there.

Sam walked right up to the stall and, for a moment or two, Steve could have pretended that his modesty was preserved, the frosted glass fogged up by steam. And then Sam slid the door back and stepped in behind him, without a smile on his face for once, without a comment or a raised eyebrow.

“Your back?” he said, voice quieter than Steve had ever heard it and, for a moment, Steve just stared at him. 

And then, slowly, he nodded, turning back again as he closed his eyes, water streaming over his face and his shoulders. 

Steve heard the click of the showergel package, and set his palms against the tile up by his shoulders, waiting for the rasp of the sponge over his skin. 

But it didn't come. Instead, smooth warmth began to ease cool gel across his shoulder blades, and it took Steve no time at all to recognize that it was Sam's hands. The flat of his palms, the length of his fingers, both were suddenly overwhelming to him, Sam's skin suddenly a need Steve hadn't even known he'd had. He tipped his head back a little as Sam's hands stroked downward, toward the raised scar that rested just above Steve's kidney.

The shot had come damned close, closer than Steve wanted to think about right at that moment, and it was only when the pain didn't come that Steve realized Sam was touching it and it must be healing, somehow he'd be just fine despite everything, despite all the pain lodged deep behind his breastbone. 

He barely dared breathe, couldn't think at all anyway, and Sam's other hand slid slowly around his waist until his fingertips covered the matching mark on Steve's stomach. And then Sam pressed himself close and stilled.

Steve looked at Sam over his shoulder again, found Sam looking back at him, and couldn't look away.

“Put your head down,” Sam told him, and Steve did it because it sounded like an order, because he found his body obeying before he'd even thought about it. 

And the water washed over them – over Steve first, clearing the soap away from his skin, and then over Sam too a moment later, when Sam pressed himself to the length of Steve's back, both arms around him. One of Sam's arms around his waist, the other hand over Steve's heart and Sam's cheek pressed to exactly the same place on Steve's back, Steve didn't do anything for a long time, eyes still closed, hands still against the tile. And then he lifted his hands and closed them over Sam's wrists, one at his stomach and one at his heart.

They could have stood there for hours and maybe, any other day, Steve would have thought of everything that had happened. He would have run through everything in his mind, play by play, blow by aching blow, thought back to the moment he'd first 'met' Sam, and the moment they'd first introduced themselves, to the moment he'd been sure he was going to die and the moment he woke up to crisp sheets and smooth music.

But not now. 

Now there was only the flow of water over flesh that still felt too tight, too tired somehow, and the warmth of Sam's _skin_ , skin on his own, arms around him. It felt as though he might fall into nothing if Sam were to leave, as though every pain that ever sank into his bones was rolling under his skin so that Sam could ease them. 

Sam would ease them.

It welled up unexpectedly then, pain and anger and _grief_ , for both of them, for Sam and his past and his present, and everything between them. Sam set one hand against Steve’s side, in the dip of his waist, sliding the other around Steve’s waist to his chest, to pull him backward, to turn him.

Steve went easily, turning from the shower head to settle his hands on Sam’s hips, towering over him with the water beating a tattoo against his back. And Sam just looked up at him, waiting for him, waiting and watching, just _staring_ at him. And then, as though he couldn’t stand to look, Steve dropped Sam’s gaze. Sam shook his head slowly, brushing wet hair off Steve’s forehead, but Steve kept his eyes down as Sam folded his arms around Steve’s neck and pulled enough to tug him forward. 

Sam stood on his toes and slid one hand down to Steve’s jaw, fingers of his other hand sinking into Steve’s hair to turn his head away, to bring Steve’s head almost to his shoulder.

Then he pressed his lips to Steve’s hair, behind his ear, holding his mouth to the sodden strands for moment after moment, stroking his hand against the back of Steve’s neck, the side of his throat. And then he pressed his mouth to the delicate shell of Steve’s ear itself, turning Steve’s head with his hands to reach it. Steve didn’t fight him, didn’t question him, didn’t push him away. He just held on tight to Sam’s waist, and let Sam press his mouth next to his cheekbone, and then to his jaw

“Sam-” he managed, barely a whisper at all, and then Sam kissed him, soft and slow and chaste, just kissed him, wrapping one arm around Steve’s torso and the other around his head.

Steve let him, kissed back insofar as he stood still, and let himself curl forward when Sam broke the kiss, let Sam cradle his head against his shoulder. 

They stood there for a while, still and silent, Sam’s arms around him, until Sam turned his head and kissed at Steve’s wet hair again, at his ear and his temple as he held Steve tighter.

“ 'S get you dry,” he murmured, dropping Steve's gaze, reaching past him to turn off the shower, and Steve, suddenly unsure of himself, of whatever the hell they were doing, only nodded as Sam pulled back the door.

Stepping out of the shower, though the lip was barely raised, still took effort, and Sam watched carefully as Steve put a hand out to steady himself on the wall. He found towels – one each, and big enough to wrap up in – and helped Steve reach his feet, reach his back. He threw the towels on the floor when he was done and, as Steve swayed again, Sam held one of his own hands out a moment later without any of the pity or impatience Steve expected when he raised his head.

He looked at Sam, at the way he held his head and then at his outstretched hand, and then back again, before he made his decision, reaching out to take Sam's hand in his own. Sam used it to help him forward, getting himself under Steve's better arm as soon as he could to take most of his weight and, bracing one hand carefully against Steve's stomach and the other arm across Steve's back, Sam started walking them out into the bedroom.

The air was cooler as soon as they passed the threshold, and Steve felt the goosebumps rise on his skin. If Sam noticed, he said nothing, and it wasn't until he'd helped Steve ease himself down onto the mattress, not until Steve was lying on his back on the perfect mattress and Sam was standing that he got the chance to look at Sam's face again. 

Sam turned, as if to leave, and that was as far as he got before Steve grabbed his wrist, surprising himself. Steve waited, couldn't make his throat work enough to speak, enough to say what he wanted, to ask Sam to stay. And, for another long few seconds, Sam just stared at him.

And then, like some miracle, some saving grace that Steve knew he didn't deserve, Sam _did._ No _are you sure,_ no _is this what you want._ Sam just turned back and walked around the bed and pulled back the covers next to Steve, settled in beside him.

And Steve didn't know what to do. He knew what he _wanted_ , and that was the heat of Sam's skin against his own, the rise and fall of Sam's body to match his breathing to, and he knew Sam wouldn't deny him. There was no question of that. But with Sam's skin, Sam's body, he wanted silence and space and his back to a wall and a route to the door and he wanted more than he could put into words, terrified Sam would end up like the other things Steve missed, like Peggy and Bucky and everyone else, _gone. Fallen away and lost, like everything else._

~

And, when Steve tried to turn onto his side, Sam helped him, smoothing one hand down his back to hold him closer, to soothe just a little.

Sam didn't need to ask why he looked so afraid, didn't need to ask him why he'd lifted his head in the first place, so Sam held onto him, hands pressing against the small of Steve's back and the back of Steve's shoulder to guide him forwards.

Steve just searched Sam's face, his eyes wide and glittering in the warm light of the evening, and there was something undeniably desperate about it, too, as though Steve were afraid Sam might fade into nothing if he so much as eased his grip.

Sam figured that wasn't such a strange thing for a man like him to fear.

But he knew anxiety, knew the need to move that sometimes came with nights like this, and holding Steve tight would only stifle him. He’d felt the same thing himself before. And so Sam turned onto _his_ side, too, putting his back to Steve.

Steve looked at him, at the spread of his shoulders and the dark of his hair and the smooth, beautiful line of Sam's backbone between his sharp shoulder blades and saw every place his hands could fit, every place he could press his mouth to and taste.

Without looking back, probably without even opening his eyes, Sam lifted his arm and reached back for Steve's hand, lacing their fingers together to draw Steve's arm over his waist as he shifted his body back, pressing his back to Steve's front.

Sam's stomach was warm, his fingers dry when he wrapped them around Steve's wrist, and Steve flattened his fingers slowly, hesitantly, against Sam's skin. Sam didn't speak, didn't tell him to move, he just waited.

And then Sam lay still, head turned just a little toward the pillow, and didn't move when Steve pressed his forehead to the back of his skull, except to close his fingers a little tighter about Steve's wrist.

~

Steve slept for the hours he’d been awake during the night, but it lasted a very long time, for both of them. Sam had learned to sit still – every soldier learned to sit still, just as every soldier learned to sleep when they could in case you didn't get the chance again soon. There were a great many things a soldier learned to do, an airman learned to do, a sailor learned to do, to survive. Those who'd seen active combat learned those lessons well – a lot of the time, if you didn't learn them well, you didn't get much of a chance to learn anything at all.

So sleeping shallowly, quietly, and often was something Sam could do easily. Apparently, Steve was just as good at it. Sam couldn't tell from this, though, how good Steve was at turning it off when he wanted to – it had been years, and Sam was doing okay, and he could get a full night of sleep without nightmares and without jolting awake at every half-formed noise in the far distance if he wanted to. 

And maybe it was just the proximity. Maybe being this close to Sam had brought things back Steve had thought buried, memories of huddling for warmth and listening for enemies, but to Steve it didn't much matter what was making him do it, only that Steve stirred at every sound. With each passing siren, each car horn, each click of the A/C, Steve moved just a little, eyelashes fluttering, grip going just a little tighter where his hands rested against Sam's skin.

Sam hadn't had anyone hold him quite so close for quite so long for a very long time, and Steve ran hot, skin warm against his own to the point that it should have been uncomfortable. But, for whatever reason, it was just enough. Steve's arms were still around him, hands high up on his chest, the length of him pressed bodily to Sam as much as he could. Sam might be shorter, but Steve had curled up against him somehow, and came awake at sounds as though he were waiting for a gunshot, surfacing each time for just a second before he sank into quiet stillness once more. 

Once, when Steve didn’t respond to Sam saying his name, Sam turned over to face him, to bring his voice closer, to make their closeness easier. He threaded the fingers of one hand through Steve's hair, cradling his skull, and Steve breathed in through his nose at that, the warmth of his chest expanding against Sam's. Steve's own hands were huge, and one moved, cradling the back of Sam's neck like a precious thing, the warmth bleeding down Sam’s spine slowly as Steve began to settle again.

“Stand down, Cap,” he said softly, and Steve went still again.

So, for a very long time, they lay in relative stillness. Sam thought Steve might have actually gone fully to sleep once or twice, but he never did it for long though he didn't sound all too conscious, either. Sam watched the light fade outside, listened to Steve breathing, heard the birds quiet until the sound of the distant city at night and the slow in-and-out were all that remained. 

Sam was good at waiting, good at doing nothing and, to be perfectly frank, Sam wasn't ready to let his concentration slip just yet. Steve didn't move away, but didn't hold him too tightly either, and Sam wondered if that came from being broad and strong or from having been frail and fragile. Probably a little of both. 

By nine, the sun was well and truly up and, by ten, there was a breeze picking up outside. Around eleven, the A/C kicked off with a clunk Sam had grown too used to to want to fix, and Steve shifted, like he had so many times before. And then, to Sam's surprise, he spoke.

“Ain’t fair to you,” he murmured, his Brooklyn accent thick. “Y’ain’t my keeper.”

Sam didn't say anything, not sure Steve was completely aware of himself. Sam had been there too often – mumbling to himself in the early hours because he was near sleep and it seemed like a good idea at the time, only aware of the vague nonsense he'd been spouting once coffee and an early run kicked his brain into gear.

Steve shifted a little, turning his head so that his breath warmed Sam's throat, and Sam didn't say anything, unsure of the spell Steve was weaving around them like a cocoon but unwilling to break it. He worked at the VA for a reason and, while he wasn't fool enough to think that everything hinged on this moment, he did recognize that maybe this could be the start.

“Ain't SHIELD either,” Sam told him, voice just as low, and something changed. 

Whatever it was started with the flex of Steve's fingers on his skin and the movement of Steve's legs under the covers, the way Steve slowly raised his head as though he couldn't believe where they were, that they were both still here. His eyes were still bright even in the darkness of the bedroom, enough light leaking around the edges of the blinds to make his features clear. He wasn't smiling with his eyes or his mouth, and Sam could _feel_ Steve's gaze as he searched his face.

“Can't do this without it meanin' somethin',” Steve said, his voice a whisper, scratching in his throat, and Sam understood that, understood what Steve meant by it. 

Steve wasn't the kind of guy to do something like this without meaning it, and he was letting Sam know because it just might destroy him if Sam felt otherwise.

“Wouldn't do it if it didn't,” Sam answered, and that was enough for Steve, it seemed, who slowly nodded, closed his eyes, and settled down again.

Steve woke a while before he opened his eyes, aware immediately of where he was. There was no confusion about his location, no confusion about whose body he held in his arms, and he lay still just to feel it. Sam's hair soft against his cheek, Sam's strong chest against his chest, Sam's spine beneath his hand, Sam breathing.

It was getting on for mid-afternoon, he knew that much – there was light enough that he could tell through his eyelids. But he was suddenly unsure of their position. Sam had stayed with him, let Steve hold onto him like an anchor but, though he'd been positive of the meaning this morning, Steve suddenly wasn't sure what that meant any more. 

As a skinny, sickly child, he'd always hated his body for the weakness in it, and he hated others seeing it – the lines and shadows of his ribs, the ridges of his spine; he'd been humiliated by his inability to be better. But, though he’d known he was being pathetic and was suitably mortified, the sheer number of people who'd poked and prodded and turned and measured and just plain _hurt_ him was so high that he came to a point where he no longer cared, wary enough of it that none of it was new to him. He'd grown used to shivering in his underwear atop cold, hard doctor's tables while they gauged how many years he had left, told him how many years ago he should have succumbed. When they'd called him pathetic, he'd just stuck his chin out and told them where they could shove it - he’d been _in_ that body. He’d already known.

So skin had never been a problem, nakedness had not been awkward for a long time. Steve had long ago shed the shame of sharing skin and space with others – any discomfiture he'd had left after so much sickness and weakness as a child and a young man, any timidity that still remained after doctors' examinations and enlistment physicals, was drummed out of him by the army. It was just skin, and he was no different than anyone else. And sure, he knew that this body, the body the serum had given him, was better, stronger, was aesthetically pleasing and physically impressive. Imposing, when he wanted to be.

But the thing about Sam was that they clicked. 

Sam had proved how good he was at reading Steve's damned mind, and Steve suddenly had no idea if that offered comfort, that well-placed amusement, all the things Sam had said and done, were to do with anything more than brothers-in-arms camaraderie.

“You were having pretty bad dreams last night, man,” Sam told him softly, awake already.

Steve hadn't even been _able_ to decipher his nightmares, hadn't known dream from reality, a thousand images blurring together in a mess of blood and fire and half-recognizable faces that loomed up out of his memories, sounds that crept up behind him like an enemy and appeared out of nowhere to scream in front of him like an old haunted house, and places that were so old they might as well have never existed at all.

He'd needed somebody there, and Sam had stayed, but he found himself supremely disappointed that it hadn't helped. It never did, of course; sleeping alone and sleeping beside someone made no difference to how many nightmares came to haunt him. But sleeping beside someone made waking up a little easier.

“Sorry,” he said.

“You're-” Sam said, and then he pulled away from Steve and, for a moment, Steve's whole body tensed, the unbidden _no, wait!_ reaction tightening his arm over Sam's waist before he realized that Sam wasn't leaving. He was just pulling back a little, shifting under the bedclothes so he could look at Steve. “Hey,” Sam said quietly, one hand against Steve’s face, “hey, come on, look at me.”

It took Steve a good few seconds, the desire for the ground to swallow him warring with the desire to at least give Sam a chance to speak after the way Steve had practically run him out of his own home the night before.

“How about,” Sam said, his hand dropping to grab Steve’s wrist, tight, to stop him leaving, “you listen to me for a minute?”

Steve searched Sam’s face with his eyes, drew a long breath in through his nose, and then he nodded.

~

“All right,” Sam said. “Being human is hard. I get it. You have to feel things and think things and sometimes you’re laughin’ and drinkin’ and sometimes you want to die. Sometimes living hurts more than anything.”

Steve clenched his jaw, averted his gaze, but Sam set both hands on either side of Steve’s face and turned his head back.

“I don’t got a revelation for you. You’re the one for speeches, yeah?” 

Steve tried to smile at the joke, Sam saw him.

“But I meant what I said, man. I know you don’t particularly wanna die. But I know, for a long time, you didn’t try so hard to live ‘cause you didn’t have a lot to live for, and that’s…that’s something a lot of us go through. I went through it. The people I counsel are going through it. PTSD is nothing to be ashamed of.”

Steve felt his eyebrows draw together, felt his eyes sting.

“I just can’t,” he said, “I can’t lose him again.”

“I know that,” Sam answered. “But I saw the surveillance footage because Natasha sent it to me, and I get it. I do. I’m not asking you to let him go, I’m asking you to let me help you get help.”

The kiss Sam gave him was soft and sweet, gentle and careful and chaste with it.

“I’m gonna go start breakfast. Lunch, whatever. You come on downstairs when you’re ready.”

And Sam gave him one more kiss before he was pulling away from Steve, getting out of bed, and walking away.

“Sam,” Steve called after him, and Sam stopped in the doorway to look at him. “I’m sorry. For last night, for everything.”

Sam nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Next step is to work on what we talked about.”

Steve nodded, and Sam left - presumably to find clothes and start lunch.

***

Sam stared with half-closed eyes at the slanted lights on the ceiling from the street lamps outside. Steve lay warm and quiet against his side - half on top of Sam, really - either asleep or on his way to it. He breathed deep and slow for the time being, their legs tangled, his head on Sam’s shoulder. One hand rested in the middle of Sam’s chest, covered by Sam’s own hand, and the other was tucked up against the side of Sam’s ribcage, while Sam stroked long, slow lines up and down Steve’s spine.

It was quiet, in a way that wasn’t the absence of life and sound, but a softer way. This was silence underlined by sound and something else, silence that wasn’t really silence. 

The city was far enough away that they could hear it without it being too close to be distracting. The air outside was still, and the scarce few cars that passed outside were audible, a soft sweep of sound from one side of the room to the other. There were bugs outside, fluttering leaves and other things, small night sounds that didn’t mean a thing.

It was calm tonight, they’d spent the day in each others’ proximity, gentle touches and soft words and it wouldn’t last.

Steve’s wounds were faded scars, his restlessness growing with each passing day. It had been nice to live like this, skin to skin, shut away for the most part but Sam had known it couldn’t last and he knew what was going to come next because he’d been here before. By merit of what had come before, something else had to happen now.

And Sam knew. Before Steve even started talking - now, at least, he could be certain, he was aware.

Sam knew.

“I,” Steve said, his voice gentle and rough in the darkness surrounding them.

His hair was soft against the skin of Sam’s chest - he must be able to hear Sam’s heart beating like a drum - with his body tucked up against Sam’s side, Steve’s huge hand resting against Sam’s collar bone.

“I have to talk to you.”

Sam let his eyes slip closed, let himself breathe out slowly, carefully.

“I…Sam…”

“I know,” Sam told him, because he did, because it might as well have been written in huge DayGlo letters on his ceiling.

“I need to tell you anyway,” Steve told him, and Sam rubbed his palm over Steve’s broad back.

“Sure,” he said. “You gonna look me in the eye?”

He felt Steve curl in on himself, felt Steve duck his head, try to make himself smaller.

“I really care about you,” Steve answered, small and quiet and not at all like himself. 

Sam blinked at the ceiling and thought about that. That….wasn’t what he’d expected to hear first. It made him warm inside to hear it, eased a tension he didn’t know he’d been carrying to hear Steve admit it. Sam had known that, of course he had, just like he knew _he_ was in love with _Steve._ Just like all the other things he knew.

“But I love Bucky, too,” Steve whispered, and he sounded absolutely wretched, absolutely torn in two, because that was just it. “And I can’t leave him.”

But Sam nodded, lifted his head to press his lips to Steve’s hair, because Steve thought that this would be a revelation to Sam, Steve thought the solution wasn’t easy as pie.

“I know what you’d choose, if you had to choose,” Sam told him. 

“Sam-” Steve said, his voice thick and rough, pained in his chest. 

“I _know,_ ” Sam told him, thinking of Angela and the VA, thinking of Riley and his wings, thinking of the footage from Charlie, the argument, the takeout, thinking of his life and his family and the fact that he knew - he’d known since the hospital without knowing it, he’d known since Steve had moved in, without really understanding it, and he knew it now. “But I want you to know I’m walking in, eyes open, my choice, if you want me with you. And I’m not gonna ask you to choose. If you can love both of us-”

Steve’s head snapped up.

“I ca- I _do_ , I want you with- I love both of you.”

Sam stroked the skin over Steve’s cheekbone, carded his fingers through Steve’s hair while Steve’s eyes, wide and glittering in the darkness, searched Sam’s face.

“Sam,” he whispered.

Sam cradled the back of Steve’s skull and nodded.

“Yeah, I can live with that.”

Steve kissed him, suddenly but softly, long and warm.

When he pulled away, he didn’t move back, covering Sam’s body with his own instead, hand wrapping around the back of Sam’s neck as he pressed their foreheads together, noses bumping, hands moving as Steve kissed his cheek, his eyebrow.

“Sam,” he whispered, _“So much,_ Sam.”

Steve held onto him, hands on Sam’s skin, body pressed to Sam’s.

“Then I guess,” Sam said softly, “we’re goin’ to find your boy.”

**Author's Note:**

> This fic got started in 2016, after being planned from 2014. It is _finally_ done and I am _so_ much happier with this iteration xD It was a mess to startt with, for a long time, so I hope you enjoyed this final draft. Please let me know if you think I've missed any tags.


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